A BRIGHTWATERS woman has been honoured at the NSW Woman of the Year Awards for her work with the local deafblind community.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Justine Lorenz recently received the Community Hero Award at the presentation night in Darling Harbour.
Ms Lorenz works as a deafblind practitioner with Hunter Deafblind Group.
Her work involves tutoring deafblind people in tactile communication.
Deafblind refers to the condition of having dual sensory loss. The condition's range includes people with profound blindness and partial hearing loss, to people with profound deafness and partial vision loss.
The work helps deafblind people to try new experiences, build new relationships, and reduce their isolation. Most importantly, her work helps deaflbind people to boost their self esteem and confidence.
"We've been indoor rock climbing, swimming with sharks, and gone on Harley Davidson motorcycle rides. The deafblind people in the group are incredibly bright, but they're just not given access to the information they need," Ms Lorenz said.
Able-bodied people take it for granted that they will require some instruction or information before tackling a new task or skill. It wasn't quite so straightforward for deafblind people to access such information, she said.
Some of her clients communicate via Auslan (Australian sign language), tactile Auslan (place their hand over the hands of the signer) or the deafblind manual alphabet.
Ms Lorenz said it had been incredibly satisfying to work with deafblind people.
"They're just so resilent and have such massive potential to do things."
Ms Lorenz said her passion for working with deafblind people was sparked 12 years ago while working as a community worker.
"I was horrified to discover how isolated deafblind people were from their community," she said.
Ms Lorenz has recently been an integral part of Community Disability Alliance Hunter's project to develop the communication and social skills of deafblind residents of a large residential centre in Stockton, so that they can transition to smaller group homes.
She said the recent announcement of $1 million in funding for the alliance through the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for a three-year project would also help to grow the Hunter Deafblind Group, and help to train deafblind people to become communication guides.
