Nomination submitted by Jane Farrall.
I have known Callee Petropoulos since she was a young girl and I was her speech pathologist. I was privileged to help her get her first AAC system, a DynaVox DynaMo, programmed with a PODD pageset. Currently Callee uses Proloquo2Go on an iPad, as well as using some signing.
Callee is now a young woman. She has complex communication needs, Aicardi Syndrome and intellectual disability. She works extremely hard at becoming a more competent communicator and loves socialising and making friends. As a result, Callee, supported by her amazing family, has gone from strength to strength with using her AAC system. It has given her a strong voice and helped her to become an active member of her local community as well as a proactive member in her wider community. She also has a growing presence in the Australian AAC Community, through attendance at conferences such as AGOSCI and at ISAAC last year on the Gold Coast.
Callee participates in many community activities through the week, with support workers. Callee teaches her support workers more about AAC as well as educating other people she meets when she is out and about. She also attends social events at Gateways Support Services and Jumpstart Community Services. During this time, she uses her AAC system and is an advocate for other people who have complex communication needs.
This year, Callee has begun attending literacy and numeracy classes at Kangan TAFE. She has also begun volunteering at Helping Hands Opportunity Shop, working as part of a team and interacting with customers. In each of these roles she constantly demonstrates the use of AAC to others and helps raise community awareness.
Callee has also been featured using her AAC system in media campaigns. She was a participant in the VLine and Communication Access video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zocrga4mj-k. This year she has also participated in the new NDIS Campaign SpeakUp!, using her AAC System throughout the photoshoot. She was also selected to be in a photo shoot for an upcoming series of social media and informational brochures from the Victorian Department of Human Services – and in her mother’s words “intrigued the production team with her communication device”.
Everywhere Callee goes she promotes the use of AAC and raises awareness of complex communication needs. Her participation in the upcoming advertising campaigns will give AAC a presence in these that otherwise it would not have had – helping even more people to be aware that AAC could be an option for them or for those they know.