Meet Kathy Rees
Transforming health and human services across government and the private sector for over 25 years.
Hello & Welcome!
Thanks for joining me. My name is Kathy Rees and I am passionate about creating and sustaining quality care for people with disabilities.
Unlike many disability consultants, my passion is firmly grounded on my lived experience of caring for my brain injured daughter. I have seen disability care from both sides of the table and know what works and what doesn’t.
Self-Managed Arrangements
In 2000, I embarked on the journey of establishing & directing a successful self-managed arrangement for my traumatically brain injured daughter and continued to manage her staff until she passed away in 2021.
In amongst what I was doing for my daughter, I also assisted other people who wanted to establish and maintain their own self-managed arrangement.
This eventually included a couple of resources that I developed in collaboration with my friend, Katrina Johnson from Newsky Consulting.
Download your free resources to assist you establish and maintain your own self-managed arrangements below.
Consultant and Author
Throughout this period, I owned & operated a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) before selling this in 2016. Both entities were externally audited & required completing a range of reporting requirements to ensure they operated at the best possible level.
In 2011, I commenced my Lead Auditor journey, auditing human service organisations for the HSQS, NDIS & ISO standards, while also providing a range of separate consulting services to people wanting to establish robust systems for their business or organisation.
My first book titled: ‘Courageous Auditing: Beyond Compliance – Towards being a catalyst for change’ was published in 2020.
Kathy’s memoir, tentatively titled: ‘Catalyst: A journey through chaos, choices, and change’ is nearing completion and is expected to be published in 2024.
Throughout these past 20+ years, I have learned more about how quality systems and continual improvement opportunities have benefited not only my own businesses but other organisations and businesses that I have assisted during that time.
Qualifications
- Master of Organisational Development & Training
- Diploma of Workplace Training & Assessment
- Bachelor of Social Science (Counselling & Mediation; Human Resource Management)
- Certificate IV in Training & Assessment
- Lead Auditor qualifications
“A person who has experienced something is always far more an expert on it than the experts”
Gloria Steinem
Expertise
Kathy Rees’s experience includes:
- Being a lead assessor/auditor with one of Australia’s largest health and human services audit and assessment agencies.
- Delivering countless short and long-term quality system implementation projects for government agencies, the private sector, NGO’s and NFPs.
- Developing and running an NDIS registered Disability Services Organisation that delivers self-directed and self-managed support arrangements for people with disabilities (including her daughter).
- Developing and running a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) that delivered a Diploma of Management, Certificate III and IV in Disability to the disability sector and other sectors as well as for individuals.
- Academic research into the role of evidence within evaluation practices of self-directed support arrangements.
- NDIA research through the Practical Design Fund and FaHCSIA: It’s not just about the support: Exploring the ways in which family members and people with disabilities evaluate their self-directed / self-managed arrangements.
- Commencing PhD studies: Mind the Gap: Exploring the Impact of Expired Compensation Funds on Traumatically Brain Injured Adults with Long-Term Support Needs’.
- Conducting academic research for Griffith University in disability topics.
- Conducting large scale community consultations in regional/rural/remote locations over three years.
- Walking the talk – Kathy’s companies have been successfully audited through ASQA as well as HSQS and, in the near future, the NDIS.
- Being published for her academic research.
Kathy is the Complete Package – Professional Expert in her field, understands culture and will put the heartbeat into your organisation or business. Kathy is outstanding to work with: she always responded to questions, communicated clearly and concisely, always delivered what she said she would do, provided great ideas for our structure, policies and procedures. Kathy possesses an edge of humility, energy and honesty that is most engaging. You want the Best … Kathy is who you want!