About Me

 

Hi, I’m Jaqui, and I’m the founder of Pathways Disability Support Services.

I have over 30 years of combined personal and professional experience in disability, but most of my learning didn’t happen in classrooms or workplaces - it happened in my own home.

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My husband and I have raised three amazing kids with Autism, ADHD and what felt like a never-ending list of medical conditions. For two decades, caring for our children - including our youngest with high support needs - was the centre of my everyday life. Those years were incredibly hard. I was exhausted, isolated, financially stretched and often unsure how I was going to get through the day. It felt like life was happening around me while I was just trying to survive inside it.

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I don’t share this for sympathy.
I share it because it’s why I’m here.

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That period of my life taught me patience, empathy, resilience and a level of understanding that can only come from lived experience. I learned how systems work (and how they don’t), how to advocate, how to pick up the pieces after setbacks, and how to keep going even when everything felt overwhelming.

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Later, when I returned to professional disability work and training roles, I saw the same struggles in other families. Different faces, different circumstances - but the same exhaustion, the same confusion, the same feeling of being left to figure everything out alone.

 

That’s why I do this work.

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The strengths I have now were hard-earned, and I use them to support people who are going through what I’ve lived through myself.