I want to tell you about a moment that has stayed with me for years.
I was supporting a young man — I'll call him Daniel — who had lived most of his adult life on the edges of things. He attended a day program, he had supports in place, he had a plan. On paper, everything looked reasonable. But Daniel had never once been invited to a birthday party. He had never been asked to join a table at lunch. He had never had someone say to him, unprompted, "Hey, come sit with us."
One afternoon, a new volunteer at the program — a young woman who had only been there a few weeks — walked past Daniel sitting alone and simply said, "I saved you a seat."
He talked about that moment for months. Not because it was dramatic. Not because anything extraordinary happened at that table. But because someone had chosen him. Someone had seen him and decided he was worth saving a seat for.
You don't have to change the whole world. Sometimes, changing one person's world is enough.
The quiet weight of being left out
Loneliness is one of the most significant and least talked-about challenges facing people with disability in Australia.
Research tells us that people with disability are far more likely to experience chronic loneliness than the general population. They are less likely to have close friendships outside of paid support relationships. They are less likely to be included in community activities, social events, or the ordinary rhythms of neighbourhood life that most of us take for granted.
But statistics don't capture what it actually feels like to sit alone at a table every single day. To watch groups form around you and never be invited in. To have people talk about you rather than to you. To be present in a room and still feel completely invisible.
Exclusion is not always loud. It is not always deliberate. Often it is simply the absence of an invitation. The conversation that moves on before you can contribute. The assumption that you wouldn't want to come, or that it would be too hard, or that you wouldn't fit in.
That quiet, accumulated absence does something to a person over time. It shapes how they see themselves. It shapes what they believe they deserve. It shapes whether they even try.
What it means to be noticed
In my years of support work, I have seen the same pattern play out again and again.
A person who has been overlooked for years — who has learned to make themselves small, to expect nothing, to sit quietly and wait — encounters one person who genuinely sees them. Not their diagnosis. Not their support needs. Not the file on the desk. Them.
And something shifts.
I think of a woman I supported — I'll call her Miriam — who had spent years believing she had nothing interesting to say. She had been talked over so many times, in so many meetings, by so many well-meaning professionals, that she had simply stopped trying to speak. Then she joined a community art group, and the facilitator — a woman with no formal training in disability support, just a genuine warmth and curiosity — started asking Miriam questions. Real questions. And then she listened to the answers.
Within six months, Miriam was teaching other members of the group her techniques. Within a year, she had her work displayed in a local exhibition.
One person asked. One person listened. That was the beginning of everything.
What genuine inclusion actually looks like — in support work and in life:
Saying hello first, every time, without waiting for them to approach you
Asking questions and then staying quiet long enough to hear the answer
Inviting someone in, even when it would be easier not to
Talking to the person, not about them or around them
Noticing when someone is on the edges and choosing to close that distance
Remembering what they told you last time — because it shows you were listening
Including them in decisions about their own life, not just informing them afterwards
The ripple effect of one act
Here is what I have come to understand about inclusion: it is never just one moment.
When someone is genuinely included — when they are invited in, when they are heard, when they are chosen — something changes in how they carry themselves. They stand a little taller. They try a little more. They begin to believe that belonging is possible for them, not just for other people.
And then something remarkable happens. They start to include others.
I have watched it happen. The person who spent years being overlooked becomes the one who notices the new person sitting alone. The person who was never asked for their opinion becomes the one who makes sure everyone's voice is heard. The person who was told they had nothing to contribute becomes the one who shows up early to help set up.
Inclusion is contagious. One act of genuine belonging ripples outward in ways we can rarely predict and almost never fully see.
Daniel — the young man I mentioned at the beginning — eventually became one of the most welcoming people at that day program. He was the one who noticed when someone new arrived looking uncertain. He was the one who saved seats.
It started with one volunteer who had been there three weeks. She had no idea what she had set in motion.
Being that one person — in support work and in life
I think about this a lot when I reflect on what support work is really for.
We talk a great deal about plans, funding, outcomes, and service delivery. All of that matters. But underneath all of it, what most people are really hoping for — what they are quietly longing for — is to feel like they belong somewhere. To feel like they matter to someone. To feel like they are a person, not a case.
Being that one person doesn't require a qualification. It doesn't require a budget line or a support plan or a formal role. It requires attention. It requires the willingness to slow down long enough to actually see the person in front of you.
It requires asking yourself: Am I treating this person the way I would want to be treated if I were in their position? Am I including them in conversations about their own life? Am I making space for them, or am I simply moving them through a system?
And it applies beyond support work too. In our neighbourhoods, our workplaces, our community groups, our families. There are people around us every day who are sitting on the edges, waiting to be noticed. Waiting for someone to save them a seat.
We don't have to fix everything. We don't have to solve the systemic barriers to inclusion overnight. We just have to be willing to be the one person — today, in this moment — who chooses to close the distance.
I have been in this work long enough to know that the moments people remember are rarely the ones we plan. They are not usually the perfectly coordinated support plan or the carefully worded goal. They are the unscripted moments — the time someone remembered their name, the afternoon someone laughed at their joke, the day someone said "I saved you a seat" and meant it.
You don't have to change the whole world. You just have to be willing to change one person's experience of it. That is enough. That has always been enough.
— Tracy Young