To make a donation please click on the 'DONATE NOW' link at the top of this page.

A spinal cord injury can happen in the blink of an eye…to any one of us, resulting in ongoing care costing between $200,000 to $300,000 each year. This is the cost for the average quadriplegic person in Australia.

And if you think spinal cord injury won’t affect you… think again. Everyday in Australia someone is struck down by a spinal cord injury: at work, on the road, playing sport, down at the beach, or simply fixing a roof – common everyday things we take for granted. That’s 300 – 400 new injuries each year, added to approximately 9,000 Australians who are living with a spinal cord injury and whose long term care costs about $500 million a year.

Why is your donation so important?

For over 45 years, ParaQuad NSW has provided services to people with spinal cord injuries and other related disabilities.

After discharge from a spinal rehabilitation unit, a person with a spinal cord injury can access the government funded Spinal Outreach Service for the first 18 months.

After this is when ParaQuad steps in.

Every year, with little government funding, we support hundreds of fellow Australians in NSW who have been affected by spinal cord injury.

By helping people with a spinal cord injury to be independent, the personal, social and economic benefits are significant, both to the spinal cord injured person and the broader community.

Where your money goes

ParaQuad guarantees at least 90% of funds donated will go directly into vital services. Your donations either regular or one off, support many essential
programs and services, such as:

ParaQuad Services

ParaQuad promotes a person’s independence after spinal cord injury by offering specialist spinal training and consultancy. These are provided by clinical nurses, occupational therapists and a social worker for people with spinal cord injury, their family and carers; as well as providing specialist training for community health professionals and personal care services.

This enables people after injury to get back to work or study, to find modified accommodation and access for a wheelchair, to keep healthy and do the everyday things that we take for granted: shopping, showering or simply signing a name.

We also provide valuable advice and training in such areas as skin care; bladder and bowel management; equipment needs; entitlements; sexual function and fertility, and training of personal carers.

ParaQuad Client Education Support and Tools

To support ParaQuad’s training programs to people with spinal cord injury and other professional carers, a range of learning tools is required.

For example, a training mannequin for carers costs $10,000 and a specially modified exercise unit costs $10,000. 


ParaQuad’s Accommodation Facilities

A long-standing tradition for ParaQuad is its commitment to specialised accommodation facilities for people with spinal cord injury across three NSW
sites: Ferguson Lodge and Berala in Sydney and Cleary Court in Newcastle. These provide transitional, respite and long-term accommodation and being approximately 30 years old, are in urgent need of renovation. The redevelopment of Ferguson lodge as a purpose-built, state of the art facility over the next
2 to 3 years will cost in excess of $7.5 million. This will in part, be funded by the Motor Accidents Authority and the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care, however, there will be a shortfall of $2 to $3 million. Berala is also in urgent need of upgrading.

ParaQuad also provides accessible housing advice. A new Accessible Housing kit is needed and will cost $10,000 to complete.

ParaQuad Information Services

Through information officers, publications and our website, ParaQuad provides vital information and links to the community about issues affecting people with spinal cord injury. 

ParaQuad Scholarship Program

ParaQuad’s scholarship program helps people with spinal cord injury secure skills for future employment. New donors and sponsors help develop the
scholarship program which benefits not just the individual, but the whole community.

General

As you can see, donations give ParaQuad the ability to allocate funds for everyday client services that have been established over the past 45 years.

To make a donation please click on the 'DONATE NOW' link at the top of this page.