“It’s amazing, stunning actually,” Order of Australia awardee and disability services pioneer Carmel Crouch said last week.
Ms Crouch was honoured with an AM in the General Division “for significant service to people with a disability.”
It is something she never expected, even after working for many years for the STEPS organisation, which provides non-profit training, employment, and community services to help people with disabilities to acquire skills needed to achieve their goals.
The organisation provides a range of services in Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Gympie, Hervey Bay and Bundaberg, among other locations.
She was Gympie Regional Council’s Australia Day Ambassador last year, was named Senior Citizen of the Year in Sunshine Cost Council’s Australia Day Awards in 2021 and was Australia Day Ambassador for North Burnett Shire Council in 2019.
She is a founding board member of STEPS Australia (since 1989), chair since the early 1990s, managing director since 2008 and founder of STEPS Pathways College in 2017.
“I got an email from Canberra a few weeks ago. I didn’t tell anyone at first. I was overwhelmed.
“We’ve been working in Gympie and North Burnett for almost 25 of the past 30 years and we also work in Caloundra and Noosa.
“I’m in Rockhampton,” she said on Thursday, “where they’re having their Australia Day awards today.”
Ms Crouch said she found herself working in the disability sector because of her efforts to help her son, who has a disability.
“I joined a small organisation called STEPS when it was just starting up and he was 15, and after one meeting I found myself chairman.
“I don’t know how it happened.
“That’s the destiny that was given to me because of my son,” she said.
Ms Crouch came to Queensland in 1985 from a sheep and wheat farm in central western New South Wales.
“My eldest son still runs it,” she said.
The business she bought was absorbed into a larger organisation and she became general manager, before starting her own business brokerage and consulting business.
“Then I retired and went to work for STEPS
“It’s pretty incredible really,” she said,” to have your career and what you’ve done recognised and to realise someone values it.
“It’s not exactly what you expect in life.
“We have a site for eduction and training in Noosa. We’ve been in Bundaberg for 35 of the years we’ve been in existence and we have a site at Hervey Bay.
“In Gympie we’re a very large mental health provider and disability service provider, along with education and training.”
She also chairs the Jobs Australia board, was named Senior Citizen of the Year in Sunshine Coast Council’s 2021 Australia Day awards and was North Burnett council’s Australia Day Ambassador in 2019.
She has lived at Woombye in the Sunshine Coast hinterland for 27 years.
