Restoring Hope Parkinson’s Therapy will open the doors of its new Community Hub in Buddina on July 26, marking the end of a year-long, community-driven project to convert a vacant council building into a permanent home for the charity.
The charity, which provides specialised speech pathology therapy for people living with Parkinson’s disease, has spent the past year converting the former Kawana Family Centre at 50 Iluka Avenue into what board member and speech pathologist Karen Malcolm describes as the closest thing the organisation has ever had to a permanent home.
“You might get the lease of the building, but you’ve got to beg, borrow and steal everything else,” Karen said.
Outgrowing a Borrowed Hall
Restoring Hope Parkinson’s Therapy was established in 2019 by three Sunshine Coast speech pathologists, including Karen, after they trained in SPEAK OUT!®, a therapy programme developed by the US-based Parkinson’s Voice Project for people experiencing the speech and swallowing difficulties common in Parkinson’s disease. The trip to see the programme’s home base in Texas convinced the trio there was a gap on the Sunshine Coast for a service that went beyond a single course of therapy and instead supported people for the long term.
Since then, the charity has grown to around six speech pathologists, including one who delivers telehealth sessions remotely and another who conducts home and aged care visits, alongside its signature group programme and the Choir of Sound Intent, a singing group for people living with Parkinson’s that has performed at local venues including The Barn.
For most of that time, the organisation operated out of a rented church hall in Burnside. It was a workable arrangement, Karen said, but not a lasting one. The space had no soundproofed rooms, a significant limitation for a therapy method that asks participants to speak with deliberate volume and effort, and it was never designed with the mobility and access needs of people living with a progressive neurological condition in mind.
“We can’t purchase a property,” Karen said. Two board members instead proposed approaching the council to lease a property, an idea that led the charity to the vacant former family centre at Buddina, a building that still partly houses the Sunshine Coast charity sewing group.
A Building Fit for Purpose
Taking on the lease was only the beginning. The building required a substantial refurbishment before it could serve people with Parkinson’s, including disability access ramps and an accessible toilet, along with two purpose-built soundproofed clinical rooms, a feature the charity had never had access to before.
The refurbishment has drawn in tradespeople, some of whome who donated labour or worked at reduced cost, a Federal Stronger Communities grant for the accessible toilet, a facilities grant from Sunshine Coast Council to replace the roof and add insulation, councillor discretionary funding for equipment including a projector and screen, and support from local families, including one client’s family giving fund. An internationally recognised bear artist has also contributed handmade “Benevolent Bears,” auctioned each year to raise funds for the charity.
Karen believes the charity is unique nationally. “We are the only charity of this type in the entire country,” she said. “Nobody else does this. We have our clinical arm and our charity arm.”
A Growing Local Need
The need behind the project is significant. More than 2,000 Sunshine Coast residents are living with Parkinson’s, according to figures cited at the region’s Parkinson’s Conference last year, part of an estimated 150,000 people living with the condition across Australia, with around 50 new diagnoses recorded nationally every day.
Karen said around 90 per cent of people with Parkinson’s will experience speech or swallowing difficulties at some stage of the illness, symptoms that are often overlooked next to the tremors and stiffness more commonly associated with the disease. Left unaddressed, she said, those changes can be deeply isolating, cutting people off from family, friends and community as their ability to communicate declines.
Unlike a single block of therapy sessions, Restoring Hope’s model is built around ongoing support, with some participants remaining involved with the charity for five years or more. “We’ll work with you, and that’s the paid part, that’s the therapy part,” Karen said. “But after you’ve finished, we’re going to stay with you and support you.”
What Happens Next
The Community Hub opens on July 26, with a ribbon-cutting, a performance from the Choir of Sound Intent, an afternoon tea and barbecue, and tours of the newly renovated centre. Federal MP Andrew Wallace is among the guests expected to attend, and the charity plans to publicly thank the tradespeople and volunteers who worked on the building.
For now,some of the groups programmes remain based at its original Burnside site while the transition continues, with the board hoping to secure the Buddina building as its long-term home for at least the next decade.
Restoring Hope Parkinson’s Therapy Website
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