Hello, thank you for visiting our gofundme page, my name is Caj Sinclair, and I'm sharing this in a bid to help my family - read on to learn more. Thanks so much for your interest.

Hope for a home: we need your help

It’s very hard to ask for help, I feel incredibly vulnerable putting this together and have avoided it until I can’t see any other options. I feel like I should be able to manage this on my own. But I’ve accepted that we do need help now, it does take a village, and so I’m trusting in the goodness of my friends and family and putting this out there.

We are trying to organise a living situation that is suitable for our son, Willem, and we just don’t have enough resources to make it happen. The help we need is extra resources to make a suitable living space for Willem. Willem can’t live in the family home, so he and the parent caring for him are essentially on the brink of homelessness.

It’s hard to explain this need if you’re not familiar with Willem without compromising his privacy.

If you don’t know Willem well, or even if you do, here’s a shout out to his current passion, his YouTube channel (co-hosted with his fantastic support worker Daniel) cars_mad (click here) where you can learn about all things cars, and support him by subscribing.

We have been very lucky to be able to provide Willem with the living situation he needs since May with the financial generosity of family by renting a unit around the corner, but this can’t continue past the end of April. We are very lucky that we have land/space available on our home block where we can have him live separately. However, the problem is that we're struggling to pull together resources to create a suitable living space for the climate of Tasmania.

If you can help, we’d love to hear from you. We know that we are not alone in struggling as a family, so we’re not asking anyone to go beyond what they can comfortably share with us, but you never know if you never ask and we’re holding open the possibility that someone we know might be able to help us out.

How did we get here?

My husband and partner of 20 years, Shane, and myself have created a beautiful family of 4 children over the past 12 years, Willem (12), Jaya (10), Sylvie (6) and Elowen (4). However, we’ve found parenting this little family extremely challenging, like many parents do struggle these days. Except, unlike many parents, we feel like we’ve been failing our little ones more and more with what they are showing as their needs. No matter how much love, care, empathy, attachment, special attention, parenting courses, learning, coaching and giving of our ourselves, our family life progressively became unbearable for all of us from 2018 (although starting earlier) to 2023 due to not being able to meet everyone’s needs.

We don’t align with the deficit-based perspectives intertwined with the common understandings of the language of disability, but we eventually learnt to live with this being part of our picture and have had substantial support from the NDIS over the past 2 years which helped significantly. But, as good as it has been, the NDIS processes have made accessing the right support in a timely way almost impossible. In addition, the kinds of support they can provide are very specific and the hurdles to jump to access them have made our lives even more unbearable in ways I could never have imagined.

Eventually, we came to realise that all living in the one house together was one of our major stressors. In May 24, we decided to try living in 2 separate places as a desperate and either really courageous or really foolish bid to try to circuit break our family stressors. As chance would have it, 6 weeks later, in Jun 24 Willem was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, complicating our lives even further and prompting Shane to take a year’s leave without pay.

Since May, Willem and a parent are in one house and the girls and the other parent are in the other house, with Shane and me switching over mid-week. It has been the best thing we have done to support everyone. Despite how hard as it is managing 2 households, always being single parents managing two homes, and trying to manage the millions of details of life when we almost are never in the same place at the same time, it is totally worth it.

Our kids are thriving with the new situation, recovering from the burnout they were showing, and gaining many new skills and wellbeing. Sylvie now laughs more, has overcome many fears that were stopping her from doing most things that children her age can do, is more confident in her body which used to often be in freeze - she is now hopping and climbing, and has gone from being unable to stay at school on her own and unable to speak whenever she is in unfamiliar situations to looking forward to school and loving being part of her friendship group at school. All our girls now have time for the important work of childhood - play – and can more freely spread out their games all over the house and dive deeply into their imaginations. Willem is now thriving with the freedom of being able to just 'be'. Free from the distractions of things he finds intolerable, he spends more time enjoying his passion projects and taking the time he needs to reset when stress arises.

The lease at the unit where Willem lives with his parent ends in April, and we already know that for our children’s wellbeing we cannot live together as a family again at that point. If we tried that, the dynamics would regress to what they were before and the children would quickly unravel. At this stage, we can only spend a carefully scaffolded few minutes to an hour as a family before needing space again. Over the holiday season, we had some extra success of spending a few hours together on Christmas Day, and a week later Willem managed to camp overnight, (with a parent for him at all times), near the rest of the family. This is great, but both events were only possible because of the excitement and novelty which helped everyone be in a better space and be able to compromise more. And also by the highly increased focus, planning and vigilance of us as parents. Both times, it resulted in everyone being pushed beyond their tolerance zones and needing us parents to swiftly end the interactions by taking one group or the other away. To recover, we then spent several days apart which allowed everyone to reset back to being calm around each other and to resume for the usual short, few minute visits back and forth. Given the current status, it’s unthinkable that we could be in the same house day in and day out now, or even by the end of April. It’s taken us 9 months of living apart to get to the point where we can even small amounts of time together happily.

We need to do this ourselves aka privately

We have looked everywhere and asked everyone from the NDIS, advocacy organisations, public housing and beyond, and there is no public funding support available to help us with housing for Willem and the adult caring for him, so the only way we can get somewhere for Willem to live is to fund it privately. With our personal finances strained, we are limited in the funds we can access for a further bank loan.

What we are trying to do

We explored the ideal but….

The ultimate ideal would be to have a separate small unit of 60-80m2 with a bedroom for Willem, and a separate one for his adult, and a living area, a small kitchenette and bathroom. However, we have been advised that this would cost a minimum of $4,000/m2 no matter which method we use of building, kit home, livable shed etc because of the higher costs of smaller spaces (with less cheap square meterage). This puts the costs between $200,000 and $300,000. Owner builder could save approx. 20-40%, but the last thing our family has is time and capacity for being owner builder so it’s not really feasible right now.

So then we looked at a more make-shift option but….

Our next step down would have been to try for a smaller portable building or tiny home that can be certified properly through Council (so that we don’t risk it being taken away at some point). This on its own would not give Willem enough weather-proof space in the colder months to move around and do the kinds of things he (and a lot of other 12-year-olds need to do). So we see that we need to combine a space-constrained living space (portable/tiny-home) with a shed which creates some relatively cheap but more spacious weather-proof space where Willem can tinker with cars and move. However, this option isn’t much cheaper than a unit, although some costs can be shaved off – around $150,000 to $250,000.

So then we tried to work out what is the minimum we can manage with ….

So now, we are aiming for the minimum possible that we think that we might be to manage with the bank loan which is:

- A shed rated as livable (by choosing the right structure and slab specifications) so that in future (or when we have enough resources) it can be fitted out as livable spaces – the size will depend on how much funding we have – we’re hoping for a 6x6, 36m2 minimum, and bigger if possible. While we don’t have anywhere else, this can be where Willem has some weather-proof space for during the days that he can stand up in and move and recreate in – hopefully we can insulate part of it so that he and his adult can be warm enough in winter

- Including a bathroom because… essential

- And as the bare minimum a caravan or motorhome where Willem can sleep in a weather-proof place that is cosy and feels safe

But…..

We are still feeling incredibly uncomfortable with Willem and his adult living in a caravan and shed.

Most people’s reaction to Willem having his own caravan is like ‘oh that’s cool!’. I guess they are imagining a bit of an outdoor adventure kind of fun, a bit like a treehouse or cubby, or teenagers’ retreat. But the thing is Willem won’t be ok with just coming into the main house whenever he wants for the same reasons that he can’t spend long periods of time with the full family. If living outside gets uncomfortable, he won’t have anywhere else to go. So, he’s not just ‘camping out’ in the backyard, he would be living there full-time. There’s not many people who would live by choice in a caravan in the middle of winter in Tasmania.

Willem is incredibly reliant on his living space being ‘just so’, to allow him to get through his days. So, even though Willem is positive about the idea of a caravan, or even better a motorhome (because, engines!, Shane and I feel really concerned that this option might not be very suitable unless we can resource some proper weather-proofing/insulation in the form of an insulated shed, a decent caravan, and ideally, a protected walkway to the shed from a caravan.

What help do we need?

The kinds of things that we imagine will help us include:

- Financial donations of any size, every little bit will count – we know many people may not be able to manage anything and that’s fine – thank you for reading. We're just giving this a go, and you never know, many small donations, like $5, $20, $50, or even some larger $1,000 or even $5,000, would make a big difference.

- Possible loan with terms that allow us to pay it when our children are a bit older and we can work and earn more

- Labour to help us build and fit out a shed

- Materials to help us fit out a shed – do you have spare timber, lining, cladding, insulation or other building materials?

- Help to obtain a suitable caravan, maybe someone has one that they can lend us or rent at a low cost?

- Advice, tips and tricks – please if you can see a better way, hit us up, I have tried to share the process we’ve been through because we feel like we’ve explored lots of options, but there can always be other options

With

$5,000 raised we can have a proper bathroom

$10,000 we can insulate a shed

$15,000 would help us buy a decent caravan

$20,000 we can build a shed

$50,000 we can have a warm living area and break out space

$80,000 we can have a full home to get through the winter

A think-big alternative for investor/s: Investment to build a unit is also an option: because the land is on a second title, an investor could fund a unit build and/or acquire the land and rent to us ... we're open to conversations

Thank you for reading to the end. If you can donate, we'd be forever grateful, and if you can help in other ways please get in touch via the gofundme messaging function.

With gratitude

Caj and Shane