From a very young age, I knew I wanted my life to be about helping people. I did not fully have the words for it at the time, but I knew I was drawn to people who were hurting, misunderstood, or struggling, and I knew I wanted to be part of helping them find a different way forward. My own childhood was quite unstable, and those early life experiences shaped the way I came to see people, pain, behaviour and healing. They gave me a very deep understanding that a person’s life can change dramatically when the right support is there at the right time.

For a long time, I thought that path would be psychology. But when I eventually found behaviour studies, it felt like I had found the exact thing I had always been looking for. I often describe it as a ‘Cinderella’s slipper’ moment. It was the perfect fit. It did not feel like learning something foreign. It felt like I was finally putting language and structure around something I had already understood deeply in life.

I went on to formally study behaviour, complete postgraduate training, work within the university setting, and then start FABIC in 2006, long before the NDIS existed. What began as me working alone as a behaviour specialist has now grown into a multidisciplinary practice, but the heart of it has never changed. FABIC was built on a simple truth: every human being is amazing, and their behaviours do not define them. Behaviour is something a person does. It is not who they are. If we want real change, we have to separate the behaviour from the person, understand why it is happening, and support the individual and the people around them to build the skills needed for a different outcome.

That is the ethos that sits underneath all of FABIC. We do not reduce people to labels, diagnoses, presentations or their hardest moments. We ask why. We get curious. We look for the reason underneath the behaviour rather than reacting only to what is showing on the surface. For me, behaviour is always communication, and heightened behaviour is always preceded by anxiety. So instead of asking, “How do we stop this behaviour?”, I am always asking, “What is this behaviour trying to communicate, and what skills are missing here for this person or this support team?”

I have also never believed in working with a client in isolation. One of my core philosophies is that there may be one client, but there is always a whole community around that client. Real, lasting behaviour change does not happen from one hour of therapy a week in isolation. It happens when the family, carers, teachers, support workers, clinicians and wider support team understand what is going on and know how to respond in a more helpful way. That is why so much of FABIC’s work focuses not just on the participant, but on equipping the whole support community around them.

Over the years, that philosophy has shaped everything I have created — clinical services, workshops, books, training, and FABIC TV. Much of it grew from the same pattern: listening closely to what families and support teams needed, noticing when I was repeating the same support over and over, and then building a way to share that knowledge more widely without losing the heart of it. That is how the educational side of FABIC evolved, always from real work, real people, and real need.

One of the things I care deeply about is that FABIC’s practitioners are not only NDIS-ready, but truly behaviour-ready. Because there is no clear formal pathway that adequately prepares people for high-quality behaviour support, I have built a structured internal model to train, supervise and support our team. Every practitioner comes with their own discipline, but behaviour support is its own career, and I take that seriously. Through supervision, training, FABIC TV, intervention meetings and regular support, I work closely with the team to help them develop the practical skill, depth and confidence needed to do this work well.

I remain very hands-on in that process and oversee every behaviour support client who comes into FABIC. I work closely alongside the team through supervision, report guidance, intervention meetings, strategy support and ongoing clinical oversight to help ensure that every client is supported within the FABIC philosophy and to the standard we believe in. I do not lead FABIC from a distance. I stay actively involved in the work and in supporting the practitioners delivering it.

The team at FABIC reflects this same heart. One of the things I am most proud of is that we have built a team of people who genuinely care for others, who believe in the person underneath the behaviour, and who want to understand rather than judge. That matters deeply to me, because this work cannot be done well from a purely procedural place. It has to come from integrity, from real care, and from a genuine belief in people’s capacity to grow.

Ultimately, my work has never been just about reducing behaviours of concern. It has always been about helping people build greater independence, greater capacity, greater joy and a better quality of life. I do not believe misery needs to be accepted as normal. I believe people can learn, heal, build skills, strengthen relationships, and experience life differently when they are properly supported. That is what I have devoted my life to, and that is what continues to sit at the heart of FABIC.