APM ParentsNext Rebecca's story transcript

Rebecca Hayes: Hi, my name is Rebecca. I am 24 years of age and I have a four-year-old daughter. I'm a Gunaikurnai Monero Bidwal woman from [foreign language] area on Gunaikurnai country, and I've been with ParentsNext program for approximately a year now. When I first came here, I'm not going to lie, I was homeless. I was mentally not in the right head space. I was going through some financial issues and then Jess come along into my life and she helped me get onto the appropriate resources and she was chasing people up like no tomorrow as well. She really helped me push me in the right direction. At the end of the day, it all comes down to you really. It's just what do you want to do? What do you want to do to help your children to be the next you? You want to be the role model to prevent them from being another statistic or... Education is the key. ParentsNext for me has opened up doors to my self-worth, really.

Jessica Maunder: Hi, my name's Jessica. I'm the business manager for Gippsland. When Rebecca first presented, she always knew she wanted to be a police officer, but she was unsure how to reach that goal. After researching with Rebecca, we found that Victoria police were running some training sessions down in Melbourne. Bec was able to attend that for a couple of weeks and realized that she really wanted to work in the justice system. So we supported Rebecca to gain employment down at our local courthouse as the security guard, and just recently, Bec has also gained further employment as a paralegal. Bec is a great inspiration to the community and she knows what she wants to do, but she just doesn't always know how to do it. So at ParentsNext, we were able to guide her and give her the resources and information she needed to be able to get that job done.