Community - Be Just Like Jack – and get the most out of life
Jack Duffy is one tough customer. The 11 year-old has cerebral palsy spastic quadriplegia, and his parents Chris and Erin Duffy, set up the volunteer group 'Just Like Jack' last year. It's dedicated to helping special needs kids like Jack have a few fun adventures and get the best out of life..
Jack Duffy is a tough customer. The 11-year-old has cerebral palsy spastic quadriplegia – which means he can’t walk, talk or eat by himself.
But according to his dad, Jack understands everything and doesn’t think his condition should get in the way of his making the most out of what life has to offer. Thanks to his family and the volunteers at Just Like Jack, he doesn’t have to miss out on all the good stuff.
Just Like Jack is a volunteer group set up by Jack’s parents, Chris and Erin Duffy, last year. It’s dedicated to helping special needs kids like Jack have a few fun adventures and get the best out of life, despite their physical condition. So far they’ve raised more than $100,000 for not-for-profit organisations.
As with most parents of special needs children, Chris and Erin weren’t really prepared for what life with Jack would entail.
“My wife and I both went to the Defence Academy,” recalls Chris. “In that environment it’s about being fit and healthy and strong. We were pretty successful but had never had much to do with the special needs community. We had three kids, but when Jack came along it was fairly confronting and quite a challenge for us. It took us a while to come to grips with his issues, but we realised there are a lot of kids much worse off.”
Their shared military background likely made them better equipped than many to face the challenge.
“Erin and I had been on operational deployments,” says Chris. “We’d had experience in dealing with different kinds of challenges in stressful environments, and facing it together also helped a lot. Our training held us in good stead for meeting these challenges. But you really can’t prepare for it. It knocked us on our bums for a while, but it’s worked out that our lives are 1000 per cent better for the experience.”
Jack’s first big adventure was back in 2009 when he and his dad paddled 600km from Launceston to Hobart in a kayak. Jack spent an hour each day on the water with his dad. “We were in Hobart and I was being a house dad while Erin was still with the army,” Chris remembers. “I was taking Jack to appointments and meeting all these single mums [of special needs children] whose partners had left. We had it so good compared to them and that’s what motivated me to do the kayaking trip as a fund-raising venture for St Giles [a Tasmanian special needs provider].”
In 2015, Jack and Chris “did a couple of marathons and then the Overland Track, where we raised about $30,000 for Life Without Barriers.” Jack was in the box seat on his dad’s back for the rugged 65km adventure, with a support team that included firefighters, police and a paramedic. “It was after that we decided to start our own not-for-profit so we could be in control of how our money was being spent,” says Chris. “The Just Like Jack organisation came into being late last year when we did the Point to Pinnacle. It’s been up and running for around eight months now.
Last year, Jack and Chris ran in the Hobart Point to Pinnacle half-marathon, 21km to the top of Mount Wellington and back. They’re planning on doing it again this year – along with a few other events. Having just completed the Launceston Ten (10km) in June, the Just Like Jack crew aims to have five running chairs supported by family and volunteers in the Burnie Ten (km) in October before lining up for another Point to Pinnacle in November. “That’s one of the main reasons we called it Just Like Jack,” says Chris, “because we wanted other kids to be given the same opportunities Jack has had. Getting out and participating in these sporting events, just being included, is a massive thing for disabled kids.”
Apart from fundraising, Just Like Jack supplies purpose-built running chairs and sets up the support teams so other special needs kids can enjoy doing what Jack’s doing. “The chairs cost around $2000 each,” says Chris. “We organise sponsorship and put company or business logos on the hubcaps so they have ownership of that chair. We let other kids use these chairs, but stipulate that for each event, another family member has to be involved because we know that it won’t succeed for these kids if their families aren’t involved.
Families often take on the disabilities of their kids and think they can’t do anything – we’re trying to break down those perceived disability barriers.” It can be hard work stimulating corporate interest and support, but momentum is growing. “Sponsorship is very localised at the moment,” says Chris. “It’s mainly the smaller local businesses that get behind you, not the big corporate organisations.
Being a very new not-for-profit, we are try to generate a bit of support ourselves. It’s already blown us away with how successful it’s been. We’ve got eight chairs sponsored so far and another two in the pipeline. Hopefully by the end of this month we’ll have 10 chairs available.”
Chris is also heartened by how quickly community support is growing. “We’ve got so many people involved. At the Launceston Ten last month we had about 40 people on the team. For the six kids involved besides Jack, we nominated four people per child and we alternated pushing the child over the 10km. And we set up the teams to accommodate each of the individuals if they wanted to walk or run. That’s the way we’ll work it from now on. We’re aiming to have five kids up at the top of Mount Wellington being pushed by a team of four or five.”
He reckons the smiles on the kids’ faces are all the proof he needs that Just Like Jack is working. “At the ‘Launie’ Ten, we printed out bits of paper with the kids’ names on them and stuck them on their legs. The street was lined with people cheering these kids on by name. To see their sheer joy, the grins on their faces when they realised they’d finished this race and the cheers were for them was reward in itself.”
Just Like Jack will be officially launched at a fundraising cocktail party in Launceston on August 12. “Ex-AFL player Shane Crawford is speaking. He’s one of our ambassadors. We’re having it at the Penny Royal Hotel, Launceston, which has really got behind us. We’ve got 350 people coming and we’re having a silent auction on the night to raise a few funds and hopefully get even more people involved.”
So what does Jack think of the movement that bears his name?
“Jack loves it. We were out at 6am yesterday doing a 20km training run, it’s zero degrees and he’s just laughing at all the trucks going past. Jack really embraces life. With all the issues he’s got, he’s still the happiest man out there and doesn’t really grizzle much. His attitude to life is what inspires us to do this stuff – and what inspires a lot of other people to get involved, too.
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