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Yanderra Estate Respite Services (YERS) aims to provide competitive and specialised short term accommodation (STA) services to disabled people and their families, who live on the Mid North Coast of NSW. Our YERS team are all fully trained support workers who have extensive experience in disabilities. We are dedicated in providing the very best of care. STA guests will always have one to one support 24 hours per day. Our aim is to make your stay with us a happy and memorable experience and hopefully one which will have you wanting to come back again. We are able to offer many activities for you to participate in during your stay. We are also very flexible and can arrange activities to meet your particular needs.

The principle and founder of YERS is Susan Dempster. Susan is a registered Clinical Psychologist, non-practising,  and a recipient of the Coleman Prize in Psychology. She has extensive experience in the field of disabilities, both personally and professionally. She was employed at Eastern Sydney Disability Services from 1997 to 1999 and was assigned the role as a Registrar of psychological services at Dunningham Respite Centre, Bondi Junction, NSW and trained in Functional Behavioural Assessment (FBA) at NSW Developmental Disability Health Unit (DDHU). FBA plays a major role in identifying and analysing the underlying causes of the behaviours of concern. Susan also holds a graduate diploma in Special Education, which has provided her with skills in assessment and diagnosis of learning disabilities. An understanding of the individual's strengths and weaknesses, cognitive processing and intellectual capacity used to determine the appropriate learning mode, pace of learning and reinforcement strategies when developing a behaviour modification program and determining successful outcomes.

Susan has a disabled daughter, Julie, who suffered a cerebral haemorrhage at 10 months of age leaving her with severe physical and intellectual impairments. Susan took on the role of sole carer, following the death of her husband and Julie's father when Julie was just 2 years old. She recalls the struggles and hardship of those early years when there were little to no resources available for disabled children or their families. She claims that so much has changed since then. The NDIS has provided Julie with the means to live in her own home with a wonderful team of support workers supporting her to live independently. Susan claims that the STA component of Julie's NDIS funding package also played a significant role in both of their lives allowing them both to broaden and enrich their lives more than ever before. 

Short Term Accommodation (STA) is an essential component to any NDIS funding package and families need to request, and if necessary fight, for this funding at the disabled person's NDIS planning meeting. Informal supports such as parents and siblings play a major role in supporting and caring for a disabled person to ensure they have a happy and fulfilled life and it is necessary that they don't burn out. The stressors of daily life, when caring for a disabled person, can often lead to breakdowns in other family relationships. Often marriages and partnerships breakdown due to the unrelenting stressors and time required to care for a disabled person. In such cases one parent has to take on the whole responsibility of sole carer which is a hard and lonely journey. Thus, to safeguard the family's integrity it is essential that the disabled person and their family have a period of respite from each other. This can be a time for all in the family to replenish their energy levels and broaden there focus on other important relationships and interests.