00:00 Growing up in small town Australia 

 
Fran Oldham: 
Hi, Ellie, My name's Fran. Fran Oldham. I'm an employment consultant for Disability Employment Services. 

 
Ellie Cole: 
We're going to start talking a little bit about the community and where you grew up. So, I can see your face lighting up about where you grew up. You didn't actually grow up in WA. You grew up on the East Coast of Australia – you’re an “East Coastie”. 

Fran: 

Yes, I grew up in a tiny little town called Tarlee. It's near Kapunda, for anybody that wants to look it up. It had a population of 100 people back in the day, and today I think it's only got about 300 people. 

 
Ellie: 
So still very small. 

Fran: 
So still very, very tiny. 

 
Ellie: 
What was the town like? Having a population of 100 people, I'm assuming there was maybe a supermarket. 

 
Fran: 
No.  

Ellie: A petrol station?  

Fran: No.  

Ellie: A school?  

Fran: One school. 

 
Ellie: Ok, so it was a very small community there. 

 
Fran: Yeah. 

Ellie: 
Tell us about what it was like there. 

 
Fran: The Post office was Post office come bakery, come supermarket. I suppose you could say it was a milk bar back then. It was all in one, not even the size of this room. 

 
Ellie: If I was going to come and visit, what would be the top five things that I would be doing there? If I was coming to visit you for the day? 

Fran: Going to the school to play on the swing, playing with dirt, playing with sticks and stones, building houses out of sticks and stones, collecting flowers along the street, and building tiaras, making mud pies. Yeah, we grew up with nature. We slept out under the stars. We, yeah, we did things different to the way we do things today. 

 
Ellie: Absolutely. 

 
Fran: There wasn't the fear of the next door neighbour, who they may be. We all knew everybody. And there was a bartering system, where Dad would be the one that would kill the sheep and carve it up and whatnot for our family, but also for other families that lived in Tarlee. And it was a barter system, so dad would give a leg of lamb for a crate of oranges. Yeah. 

 
Ellie: Yeah, that's amazing. It very works very similar at my parents’ sheep farm. So, you know, we have sheep that we use for meats, and my parents do the same thing. But they live in a country town that has more than 100 people, though. You know, they, they swap their lamb for fruits and veggies. and everyone kind of just trades their own produce, and it does create a really nice community there. 

 
And what's really interesting as well, is hearing about how you grew up despite having, you know, only 100 people live in the town. If I think about my childhood, it was actually very similar, and I grew up in the suburbs. So I was, you know, outdoors building like, you know, little houses out of sticks. It's amazing, you know, being able to harness the imagination of being a young child no matter where you are, if you live in a town of 100 people or in the suburbs. 

Fran: Yeah! As kids, we had one tricycle, and every year dad would paint it a different colour and it would go to the next child. And once it got to me, I was the queen. I decided who could ride on the back of it, and you'd put the kittens in there, you'd put the Bluetongue lizards in there, you'd put the dog in there. 

03:34 Fran’s brother Peter 

 
Ellie: 
You grew up with a lot of siblings, didn't you? 

 
Fran: 
Yeah, I was, as I say, I was second youngest. 

 
Ellie: 
Second youngest of how many? 

 
Fran: 
14. 15, actually, but one no longer, and I was second youngest. And my younger brother, he was my baby. There's only a year difference, pretty much between the last four kids. And then my brother that's a year older than me, a lot of people mistake us for identical twins. The shape of our face, the way we communicate with each other. But he was born profoundly deaf. So, we learnt what it was like to develop a language that nobody else understood. 

 
He was going away to school and was only at home on holidays. So, when he'd come home from holidays, he would teach us how to do sign language. But to us, that was the norm. We didn't see him as any different. And still to this day, I can have a phone conversation, or a video conversation with Peter, and I don't have to look at the screen because I understand what he's saying. 

 
Ellie: 
You just have an intuition, don't you? 

 
Fran: 
Yeah, I do. 

 
Ellie: 
You seem to have an intuition, I think, with your siblings, but when one has a disability or is profoundly deaf, I think that manifests into something that’s so much more connected. 

 
Fran: 
Yeah. People would be able to walk beside us or come towards us, and they'd be like, “which one's Peter, which one's Fran, which one's the deaf one?” So, Peter and I would actually do what twins do, I suppose you could say, and we would pull the Mickey out of people. They would be thinking that he was the hearing one and I was the deaf one. So they'd be talking to me as if I was deaf and it's like, “you don't need to talk to me any different.” 

 
Ellie: 
I suppose that gave you a real understanding, though, of what it was like for him? If people confuse the two of you, you know, growing up looking the same, one was profoundly deaf and one wasn't, you still were able to experience the treatment that he may have received, particularly in a small community. And what was that like for you? 

 
Fran: 
It was amazing as a child, but from the age of 11 we had to move over to Victoria to live with grandmother, and that's where the disjointedness of the happy childhood became apparent, because people treated my brother differently. People… the horrible names, the horrendous names. And that caused me to become so defensive to protect my brother because to me, he was no different than me. He just lost – or wasn't born with – one of his senses. 
 
So, I suppose I became his ambassador, to go out there and go, “e's no different to me.” And I wanted the world to say that he was a beautiful person, and to look beyond his disability or his inability to hear, because that's the only thing different to him and I. 

Ellie:  

With your brother growing up with a disability, we mentioned that you became a huge advocate for him. You saw so much potential in him that others may not necessarily have seen at the time. What are the skill sets about him that really shine out to you from when he was young, having to navigate having a disability from birth? 

 
Fran: 
His character, he's a prankster. And a lot of people don't know how to take him because he obviously does have a different way of pronouncing words, because he wasn't fortunate enough to be given the options that we've got today for people that are born deaf. So, he does speak differently but other than that, yeah, his special traits, he is kind, he's caring. He is magnificent with his hands, creating the most remarkable pieces of furniture. 

08:13 Language around disability 

Ellie: 
You mentioned that you worked in aged care, so I used to write on the whiteboard. 

 
Fran: 
I used to write on the whiteboard when I was teaching, the word disability, and I'd ask people what do they see in that word? And pretty much everybody had said the word ability, And I took them back. “What does the word dis mean to you?” Take away. You put take away and ability together: you're taking away that person's ability instead of identifying what that person's goals and achievements are and growing on that and assisting that person to progress, to become a better person to, yeah, shine. 

 
Ellie: 
It's amazing, the words and the actions that we have can be so empowering, but in the same turn, they can also be extremely disempowering. And that seems to sit very strongly with you. 

 
Fran: 
It does, it does. 

 
Ellie: 
Do you think that's because of your upbringing with growing up having a brother that has an impairment?  

 
Fran: 
An impairment, thank you. 100%, one hundred per cent. Because I saw the bullying, I was there first hand defending my brother, getting fat lips because I wouldn't get out of the way. Because people were making fun of my brother because of him not being able to hear what everybody else was saying about him. 

09:50 Joining APM 

 
Ellie: 
Are you able to speak about what it's been like working at APM? You've been there for 6 and a half years. How did you, I suppose, step into the world of APM and Disability Employment Services? 

 
Fran: 
I had wanted to get into APM, or a company like APM, for quite some time. My journey of working with people with disabilities in aged care was coming to an end. I was tired after 19 years of doing it, 
and I applied and a couple of days later I got the call to say would you come in for an interview? And the interview was exactly how we are right here, right now. They got to know me. They got to see the true Fran. We sat, we talked about what I identified, or what would I identify, as supporting a person with a disability. And, from memory, I spoke back about my brother Peter. And I was fortunate enough a couple of days later to be told that I'd gained the position. 

 
And I struggled. I struggled with the system. I just wasn't getting my head around it. But APM, their kindness, their caring nature, their compassion for absolutely anybody that wants to learn is unbelievable. And I stuck it out and I'm coming up to 6 and a half years of being with APM. I moved over to Disability Employment Services just over 2 years ago. 

11:34 Support at work 

 
Ellie: 
Now, you mentioned before the APM have taken very good care of you as well as an employee. 

Fran: 

Amazing care. 

 
Ellie: 
Are you able to elaborate a little bit on that? 

 
Fran: 
So, as much as I sit here and I giggle and I've got a smile on my face, I actually have a few disabilities myself. Two of my main ones—one is PTSD from a childhood trauma, and the other is a spinal issue where I've had to have major, major surgery done on my spine to enable me to walk, to sit. 

 
Ellie: 
Really? 

 
Fran: 
Yeah, I have my own little bionic machine inserted in my spine as we speak, and I have remote control and I charge my backup every night. I have my own private TENS machine. 

 
Ellie: 
So do you experience lots of nerve pain? 

 
Fran: 
I did, I did. 

 
Ellie: 
I broke my hip a couple of years ago and I damaged one of my nerves and it was excruciating. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to live with chronic nerve pain. 

 
Fran: 
I lived with it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for over 10 years. So obviously it was before I came on board with APM, so I came on board with it. They wrapped me up in cotton wool, is the best way to describe it. They provided me with sit-stand desk, modified chair, which is known as an “Executive Big Arse Chair”, where the seating has actually been cut out.  

Ellie: 

Is that to alleviate the pressure going through your coccyx bone?  

Fran: (nods) On my coccyx bone. The countless operations that I had within a 12 month period, APM have been instrumental in supporting me. I've not made it a secret, my journey to get to where I am today. And the support that I've received from the EAP to my manager to the state manager to staff. “Fran, have you made your booking with EAP? Fran, are you doing okay?” If they see that I'm having a blue day, not a problem. They'll take me off the floor, take me outside, have a cup of coffee. 

 
Ellie: 
That's amazing. 

 
Fran: 
Yeah. 

14:21 Anxiety disclosing disability 

Ellie: 

Fran, it's amazing to hear that you're so well taken care of at APM, because I think for anyone that comes into work with a health condition, with an impairment, there can often be a lot of anxiety surrounding that. 

 
Fran: 
I was scared  

Ellie: Exactly. You know, there's so much anxiety and a lot of people hide exactly who they are, or what their impairments are, or what the health conditions are when coming into work because they are scared. They're scared of not receiving the right supports and for you to be able to experience that yourself and then carry that forward to your clients at APM must be so empowering for yourself as well as the clients that you deal with every day. 

 
Fran: 
I'm honoured each and every day where I've got my manager in the office or even just at a phone call away because she's at one of our other sites. I'm honoured to tell the clients, you know, I hand out both my card and her card at the same time and I'm like, “you know, if you can't get a hold of me, you get a hold of her because she will understand you. Because she understands me. She accepts me for who I am. She's definitely going to accept you for who you are.”  

And it gives them great comfort knowing that it's not just me that that person can come to. They've got my colleagues on either side of me, but they've also got my manager, and that makes them super special. 

 
Ellie: 
And definitely would alleviate a lot of anxiety as well. I don't think people are told enough that, you know, they can come in exactly as they are. 

 
Fran: 
Exactly. 

 
Ellie: 
And they'll be supported in that space as well. 

 
Fran: 
Yeah. Because we don't see them as being any different to us. I go to the point of taking myself away from my computer and my fancy sit-stand desk and my lovely “Big Arse Chair”, and I go and sit on the same side of the client and we do informal appointments. 

 
Ellie: 
I think, from speaking to participants myself, the the biggest fear of walking into Disability Employment Services for the first time is the fear of the unknown. They don't know what to expect, they don't know what it's going to be like and make a lot of assumptions. But you know, walking in and then meeting someone like you, going through Fran’s seven steps of self-discovery and leaving feeling quite empowered is certainly a theme that has come through to me very strongly when I speak to APM participants. 

 
And, you know, being able to speak to people that work for APM as well and how empowering it is for people who work for APM as well as participants is really heartwarming for me to hear. 

 
Fran: 
I go into the unknown each and every day. Just because you think you know somebody, it's not until that day comes that you discover something new about that person. And that's the fun of going to work: trying to find what is so different about that person, what makes that person tick. It's not their disability that makes them tick; it's their life before they walk through our doors that makes them tick. 

 
We're only a small part of their journey to make them a better version of themselves. From taking them, guiding them, providing them that, whether it be emotional support or financial assistance, putting them through courses, we do it all. We take them to Centrelink and we decipher the language barrier between a person standing behind a desk to a person sitting at a desk. We decipher and we be that person's spokesperson. 

 
Ellie: 
Thank you so much, Fran. I really loved talking to you and I know that this little series is going to make a huge impact. I think you'll be the most popular woman on the West Coast after this! 

 
Fran:  

I hope so. I hope people will learn something from it to treat everybody equally, because we are all equal. 

 
Ellie: 
Thank you so much for your time.