2022 Honour Roll Inductees

Lynne McLennan was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of UFS Dispensaries Ltd. in March, 2001 and retired from this position in September, 2022. During this 21 year period under Lynne’s leadership, UFS experienced significant growth and diversification, from an organisation with seven pharmacies and a gift store, to an organisation that today operates 21 pharmacies, three medical centres, a day spa, a dedicated COVID-19 vaccination and testing clinic and Supercare Nursing Services operated at sixteen pharmacies across the state of Victoria. And in this same period, revenue quadrupled from around $20million to over $80million and the number of financial UFS members more than doubled to over 50,000 members.

The mission of UFS is to improve the health of its members and the local community and the growth of UFS in the last 21 years has benefited members in many ways, including the establishment of the UFS medical centres from 2008, providing the community of Ballarat with a much-needed alternative GP service.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, UFS stepped up and very swiftly set up a COVID testing clinic in Ballarat, ensuring that the local community had easy access to this critical service, followed later with a COVID vaccination clinic. COVID vaccinations are now also offered within the pharmacies.

The expansion of UFS and the subsequent increased profile has provided many opportunities for Lynne to communicate what it means to be a mutual organisation and how this benefits members. A longstanding tagline for UFS pharmacies is “your local member owned community pharmacy”.

Lynne has always fiercely supported and passionately promoted the mutual model of ownership, taking whatever opportunity presented itself to communicate the fact that UFS is owned by its members and exists only to benefit its members.

Lynne has also made a huge contribution to the voice of mutual community pharmacy in Australia – AFSPA (Australian Friendly Society Pharmacy Association), having served as the Victorian representative on the AFSPA Executive Committee for 20 years, with eight of those years as President.

Lynne has made a significant contribution to the advancement of the mutual enterprise model and with her retirement this year, recognition of outstanding service on the BCCM Honour Roll is very fitting.

Steve Anthony OAM is the father of Patrick, a young man with Autism and complex support needs. As Patrick’s father, Steve understood there was a gap in the sector.

Steve identified a need for better accommodation services for people with complex disability support needs which means people with a disability remain connected with their community and family once they move out of home, and they can choose who they want to live with and where they want to live and are supported to ‘Thrive’ not just survive, in their community

In 2010, through Steve’s vision and personal commitment, he set up PaRa, a family governed disability accommodation model, for 3 young men with Autism and in 2015 PaRa was registered as a legal cooperative entity.

In 2016, with the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), Steve continued to lead and grow his vision by founding Supporting Independent Living Cooperative Limited (SILC). His vision and personal commitment was to support more families and people with disability, who wanted help to set up a family governed disability accommodation model. Since start up, SILC has supported 15 groups of families to set up their cooperatives and set up their houses.

Steve’s commitment to the CME sector is demonstrated by the time he donated from 2016 – 2022 as pro bono CEO and CFO. Steve worked tirelessly to support other families to set up accommodation model, and selflessly shared his skills and knowledge to assist other families to have their child’s home and living goals and dreams realised.

Steve achieved identifiable and lasting changes to improve and promote CME’s through setting up SILC as a family governed modelled organisation which requires each house to set up as their own cooperative, and to operate under cooperative principles and rules. Many of the families join SILC’s model because of the ability to part of something more than housing support. They have an ability to be part of a community.

The innovative way which Supporting Independent Living Cooperative (SILC) has delivered its accommodation services have been noticed by the disability sector. In 2022, SILC’s family governed cooperative model was selected by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to be part of the Home and Living Demonstration Project. This project evaluated the outcomes of people with disability and their families, in operating a family governed under the NDIS.

Steve has inspired and persuaded others to act to advance the CME sector by being an active member of the BCCM and has contributed to the Social Care, Communities of Practice led by BCCM. He has openly shared his knowledge and thinking regarding SILC’s model to support the work of the BCCM in the Care Together Program, in doing so, he has inspired others to think differently in how the social care, NDIS disability services can deliver services differently and ethically.