As the mother of two children with a disability, Anita Peiris knows the value of social media in connecting with parents across regional Australia who are experiencing similar challenges to her own.
“I was always at home or at the hospital. I had no contact with the community or any social interaction whatsoever and I couldn’t find people who I wanted to connect with,” she says on the level of isolation she once felt.
“That’s when I realised just what Facebook could do. It’s amazing how many people also needed that support.”
A self-described “Facebook junkie”, Peiris’ own addiction to the site enabled her to realise the broader potential of social media in helping the families of children with disabilities share ideas, discuss resources and offer emotional support.
It’s a vision she brought to life with WA Special Families, an online support system leveraging social media to make new connections. Starting modestly in 2009 with just 30 members, she’s now supporting more than 1600 families and keen to see it expand further – even recruiting 27 people in 2013 to make it bigger, better and much broader in terms of the geographic area the system supports.
“It’s about connecting the knowledge, connecting the coping mechanisms and all supporting each other,” she says.
Now managing a team spread out across WA, Peiris uses Skype and other collaboration tools to communicate with the group, and runs weekly Facebook ‘Development Days’ for team members to debrief on the new connections they’ve made with families, as well as their success stories and resource needs.
Meanwhile, making so many connections with other parents of children with a disability puts Peiris in a unique position for lobbying on behalf of their collective needs.
She’s successfully campaigned to Premier Colin Barnett on bringing the National Disability Insurance Scheme to WA, lobbied to the WA Legislative Council and joined the NDIS Commission Reference Group as well as the Family Leadership Reference Group.
Her work’s seen her named a finalist in the NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards, and act as a mentor for a similar support networking system being set up in NSW.
But Peiris says real success comes from being able to balance the needs of her family with her career, and undertaking work that helps all those families in a similar position to her own.
Anita Peiris is a finalist in the Emerging Leader in the NFP Sector category of the NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards. Check back with Women’s Agenda for more on the finalists.
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