Twenty years ago, a group of ordinary people joined together to start something extraordinary – to remove the obstacles that were preventing people with a disability to live their lives the way they chose.

Life Without Barriers was established through the shared determination of local community members in Newcastle, motivated by their own experiences and in response to demands that local disability support services just couldn’t meet.

By generating community interest a Board-led, independent, not-for-profit, non-government organisation was formed to support people living with disability – Life Without Barriers.

I am proud to have been part of the movement that formed Life Without Barriers, and prouder still to be its Chair today, particularly as we celebrate the organisation’s 20th Anniversary.

In the past two decades, Australia’s growing and diverse population has brought with it challenges and opportunities to address the social needs of Australians.  Life Without Barriers has risen to these challenges and opportunities and now provides a broad-base of services in over 250 communities across the nation.

But the social services industry is currently undergoing its most significant and dramatic changes for many years. We believe LWB is well placed to respond to these changes, and further improve and widen our service provision to add more value to people’s lives but to do this we need to ensure financial sustainability, not only accumulating net assets. 

Having said that, our financial results continue to be strong in terms of net profit, operating cash flow and our overall financial position; and we have ensured that our surpluses have been appropriately invested.  In particular, we have focussed at improving our systems to ensure an improved quality and range of services for clients and the broader community.

Wherever possible the assets we hold have been used to contribute to the provision, breadth and quality of the services that we provide. To this end, the Board is committed to ensuring there is appropriate governance and transparency evidenced in our Annual Report as well as a clear an understanding of the motivation and “can do” culture that drives us.

LWBs success has occurred due to our focus on achieving results – results for people. We must all continue to regularly ask ourselves - “what have I done to improve the quality of someone’s life today”. 

I am grateful to my fellow directors for the courage and commitment they bring to Life Without Barriers and to our Executive Team, led by Chief Executive Claire Robbs. Thank you to our many funders who support the delivery of our services and to our staff for their dedication and professionalism to support clients. I wish to particularly thank our carers for their compassion and care to people in need.

The information that you will read, watch and listen to in our online Annual Report is only a glimpse of the very large story of Life Without Barriers, but I commend it to you and hope that it informs and inspires you as to what can be achieved when ordinary people work together.