Telstra is annoying

After waiting 4 hours today for a technician to turn up(who didn't) then being on hold for 40 minutes on a call to Telstra, I have finally lost patience.

A technician was supposed to come to organise a new line between 9am and 1pm today. This has been a nightmare to organise in the first place, and after calling I eventually find that they just decided to do something else using an existing line, not what I ordered, and what I have explained was no good to us many times over the past few weeks.

I was then told it would be another 5 days before the technician could come out, which puts us back in the same place we were before Christmas.

The icing on the cake was being asked to wait again, after waiting 40 minutes on hold, to cancel an order I never made in the first place!

(NOTE - The next people I called, iinet, still use Telstra, so unfortunately it's probably not the last time).

Meeting Orygen

Yesterday Stefan and I met with Katherine, a Mental Health Promotions Officer from Orygen, who was incredibly helpful.

Katherine was able to both answer and ask a lot of questions about how we planned to manage possible risks and issues in a positive way, including;

- Consent forms.

- Avoiding the use of umbrella terms(such as Asperger's) which may not be in use in the coming few years. Instead we need to concentrate on defining specific traits of people we with to help(for example, particularly narrow interests, adept with technology).

- How we should separate the identity of any research or funding project from the identity of the venue the kids attend.

- Caring for the mentors and what kind of support we will need.

- Looking at similar organisations for 'protocols' which can be followed when 'stuff' happens.

- Resources we use for more support, including Smart Company, Oxfam Skillshare, and pro bono possibilities.

- Resources where we can find more information, including details for the Western Autistic School, and a couple of great PDFs from the National Mentoring Alliance and Victorian Youth Mentoring Alliance on Mentoring Program Development and A Guide to Effective Mentoring Practice.

The space in action

Here are some pictures of the space in action.

I have just emailed the landlord to get permission to paint.