The leaves I can see from the window are changing colour– an outward sign the season is changing from autumn to winter.

In contemporary society, we have developed ways of combating the changing seasons. We can ship in, and buy, all sorts of fruit and vegetables year-round. Most of us can warm or cool our homes to a constant unchanging temperature. Air conditioning in a car, once a luxury, is now standard. And yet around us, the seasons continue to change.

Baptist Care SA staff comprise different cultural backgrounds representing the multiple rhythms of life. Whether celebrating Diwali, Easter, Ramadan, Lunar New Year, Passover or Mid-Autumn Festival (to name a few), change and seasons are celebrated and acknowledged.

As the CEO of Baptist Care SA, it is important that I recognise and embrace change as integral to life. As an organisation, Baptist Care SA, also needs to lean into change— sometimes as the result of its own will and sometimes due to circumstances beyond its control.

As I wrote in the Autumn edition of LIFE, the impacts of COVID have been a change outside our control. You have all done a great job of working under such challenging conditions to support our clients and those we walk alongside. Our WestCare and Homelessness Team has changed and continued to provide services throughout the pandemic. In doing so, it has continued the heritage of meeting the needs of the community during pandemics throughout history.

An important change for us in the next 12 months will be the development of a new strategy.
With an acknowledgement of the work of Leadership over the last four years in developing, completing and implementing Strategic Horizons, we are moving into a time of change— and will develop a new strategy for our vision.

Being aware of the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (V.U.C.A) environment in which we work, we will develop a strategy that will be Vision Filled, Understandable, Clear and Agile.

I encourage our donors, supporters and other stakeholders to join me on the start of a journey of change, one in which we will continue to see our mission and vision manifest from ideas to reality as we serve our South Australian Community.

Shane Austin
Chief Executive Officer