Occupational Therapist

For six months of the year, occupational therapist Julia Salmon leaves her husband, friends and family to champion the rights of people with a disability in the Asia-Pacific region.

Julia is the founding manager of the Spastic Centre’s 18-month-old international exchange and development program that provides support for people with disabilities.

“The program in East Timor and Fiji builds support for people with disabilities and trains disability workers, particularly those working with children,” she explained.

Julia also works to encourage other aid programs in region to include services for those with disabilities.

The NSW-based Spastic Centre further supports the program by giving its 120 therapists the opportunity to take part. Last year 14 staff worked in Fiji.

Julia herself will leave her “beautiful home on the northern beaches and wardrobe full of clothes,” to spend three-and-a-half months of this year in Fiji.

“I will then come back for a month and then go out for another three months. Luckily my poor husband is tremendously supportive as he knows it’s my passion and I don’t have children. But, I do have two guinea pigs,” she said.

“I designed the program (to be) not ‘person dependant’. When one therapist leaves another person can arrive and take up where they left off and keep building on their work,” Julia said.

The program is run in partnership with Australian Volunteer and one of its major aims is to help local communities understand why people suffer from physical impairments. 

“Disabled people are most disadvantaged by attitude and belief of the communities they live in, more so than the disability itself,” Julia said.

“We provide training to community workers, parents and carers to make sure they recognise that people with disabilities have the same rights as you and I and that they do have needs but also have their own strengths. They just need an enabling environment and a community that supports them.”

Last year in Fiji, Julia was involved in staging a session that examined traditional beliefs surrounding what caused disability. “We discovered that the locals believed that things like wearing a necklace when you’re pregnant, tying a sarong around your neck or even eating a twinned fruit would cause your child to be born with a disability.”

“By explaining the causes you are immediately impacting upon the community and parents by making them understand that a disability is a medical condition and that the person affected, isn’t cursed,” she said.

In East Timor Julia lived in a converted shipping container while working with the program.

“Imagine a 20-foot shipping container with a wall down the middle and caravan coating inside – so you’re not against the metal. It’s actually quite comfortable. There’s a single bed, a desk, an air con unit and a window,” she said.

“You don’t have running water and you use a squat toilet. The shower was a big barrel full of water which you scooped over yourself while standing over a drain hole. And the power, well it was off most of time.”

“For us it’s a shock and a surprise but for the people who live there, it’s absolutely normal. The majority of families in East Timor survive on less than $1 a day while in Fiji the majority of those with disabilities have been identified as the poorest of the poor,” Julia said

“The nature of development work is it doesn’t happen quickly and our aim is to build a program that can be sustained by local people. In effect we are looking to put ourselves out of work,” she said.