Ellie Cole's Couch - Fran transcript

Fran: Being able to hold your head up and go, “Oh my God, I'm glad I met that person because I'm able to change that person's life. I'm able to change their thought pattern about what Disability Employment Services are about.”

Hi Ellie, my name is Fran. I'm an employment consultant for Disability Employment Services.

Ellie: You didn't actually grew 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 had a population of 100 people back in the day and to date, I think it's only got about 300 people.

Ellie: So still very small!

Fran: So still very, very tiny! We all knew everybody and we had responsibilities from a very, very young age.

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. My brother that's a year older than me, a lot of people mistake us for identical twins, 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.

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.”

I actually have a few disabilities myself. 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: The countless operations that I had within a 12-month period: APM supported me each and every step of the way.

Ellie: I think from speaking to participants myself, 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 7 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.

Fran: Yeah.

Ellie: 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.