Paralympians and advocates put lived experience at the heart of new disability training

Australia's most decorated wheelchair rugby player, a sibling duo watched by millions, and a Paracyclist are among the people behind etrainu's new Disability Essentials training library, built to lift the quality of disability support training across the sector.

The launch comes as providers face mounting pressure. 

In early 2026, the NDIS Commission introduced a tougher regulatory framework that expands the powers of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and raises the consequences for non-compliance. Providers now have to demonstrate quality and prove they conform.

That pressure falls on a workforce that already finds it hard to keep people. The NDIS Workforce Retention Survey (2022) found that 17 to 25% of workers leave every year, which amounts to at least 45,900 people leaving the industry. So providers are forever welcoming and training new starters, all while they are still expected to deliver care that is safe, compliant and genuinely good.

Training should help carry that load, but too often it has not. Disability training has long carried a reputation for being clicked through at speed, disengaging, and forgotten by lunchtime.

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Disability Essentials was built to change that. It is shaped by sector experts and people with lived experience, sharing what they actually know, so the learning sticks. And when support workers feel prepared, they are more likely to stay, which means providers hold onto the quality they cannot afford to lose.

What sets the library apart is who built it. Contributors include Chris Bond OAM, one of Australia's most decorated wheelchair rugby players; rising Steelers player Lilliana Prucha; paracyclist Tom Walvin; Paralympic recurve archer Taymon Kenton-Smith; advocate Thomas Barlow; and Ben and Grace McIntosh, the Queensland siblings whose disability advocacy on TikTok has reached millions. Their stories anchor training that is backed by frontline, clinical, workforce and learning-and-design expertise.

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“The people who built this library have lived what they teach. Some have spent decades supporting others, some have been the person receiving support, and a few have been both. Others live with a physical disability and lead fully independent lives, yet know exactly what it means to move through the world as a person with disability. You cannot fake that kind of knowledge, and you cannot learn it from a policy document. That is what makes this training worth a support worker’s time.” Paul Hoon, Chief Executive Officer, etrainu

That experience runs through the content itself. Vlasta Tezak-Brown, a subject matter expert behind the library with more than 30 years in the community sector, wanted the training to capture what the work actually feels like.

"I want people to walk away from this training understanding what the support work actually feels like, not just what the policy says," she said. "When you have lived something, you notice the small things that often get missed, and those small things are usually what matter most."

Getting that right meant refusing to treat training as a box to tick, said Aneeta Rodricks, Head of Education at etrainu.

"You can tell when a course was written just to satisfy a requirement, and so can learners. We didn't want this to be a checklist for support workers, but we also didn't want to waste their time. Every course is sharp and focused, yet still gives learners the context, nuance and reason to care that makes the learning stick long after they've finished," Rodricks said.

Rigour sits underneath the storytelling. Chief Operating Officer Alicia Densley said the library was built to stand up to scrutiny.

"Good intentions are not enough on their own," Densley said. "We had every module reviewed by industry experts and mapped to the NDIS Practice Standards, so providers can walk into an audit knowing their training stands up. That's the confidence we wanted to give: not just good stories, but training people can genuinely trust."

Disability Essentials is now available to providers at etrainu.com/disability-support-training.