FTAW Events

Find out about events happening during Feeding Tube Awareness Week (4-10 February 2024) here. If you know of an event being held during #FTAW2024 to be added to this page, please let us know!

Tubie talk: the ins and outs of tube feeding, presented by NAPA Centre

Tuesday 6th February 2024 7pm AEDTCost: free but must register through this ticket link.
Happy Feeding Tube Awareness Week! In celebration of the feeding-tube community, THE BLEND magazine creator Melanie Dimmitt will lead a candid ONLINE conversation with Sarah Thomas of Wholesome Blends, Tubie Fun's Stacey Phillips and Natalie Gentile from Children’s Nursing Queensland. The panel will share tips around how to make tube-feeding work for your family, covering topics including blended feeds and the best equipment and accessories to weave this way of eating into a full life.
PRESENTER INFORMATION Melanie Dimmitt is a freelance journalist. Since launching her debut book, Special: antidotes to the obsessions that come with a child’s disability, Melanie has written, spoken, podcasted and advocated far and wide for parents travelling not-so-typical paths. She publishes The Blend tube-feeding magazine, hosts the award-winning NDIS Know-how podcast and creates content for Hibi, an app that helps parents manage their child's care. Sarah Thomas is the founder of Wholesome Blends and mother to 15 yr old Lewis. After Lewis suffered a major stroke at the age of 3 years old, he needed to be tube fed. Sarah started Wholesome Blends after searching for a real food alternative for her son. As this was not available in Australia, she created it herself. Wholesome Blends is Australia’s leading real food option for tube fed children and adults and is sold across Australia and New Zealand. Sarah advocates in the tube feeding space for patient choice and healthy alternatives. She supports families on their home feeding journey along with navigating the NDIS. Stacey Phillips is the founder of Tubie Fun and mother to 3 boys aged 10yrs and under, all who have their own special needs. Her youngest son was born with swallowing issues which requires him to be tube fed. Unable to find items she needed, she created them! Tubie Fun is Australia’s first tube feeding centered store that helps celebrate all things tube related. Stacey is passionate about helping everyone enjoy their tubes and removing the medical stigma that is attached to tube feeding.Natalie Gentile After initially completing a Bachelor of Social Science with a major in sociology, Natalie’s passion for social justice closely aligned with her desire to help all patients and families to receive appropriate and compassionate health care. Since commencing her nursing career in 2015, Natalie has worked exclusively in paediatrics, is a registered Stomal Therapist and has extensive experience with surgical, stomal, urological and burns patients. As a Clinical Nurse Consultant with Children’s Nursing Queensland, she provides a warm and empathetic approach to her care and focuses on providing family centred care. The online discussion goes for 1 hour and will include opportunity to have your questions answered. INTENDED AUDIENCEParents, foster parents, relatives and other unpaid carers of people with disability, who may be currently peg/tube feeding their child or may have to in the future. It is not intended that your children attend this workshop. The content presented will be relevant for any carers or parents of children. THE WEBINARThe session will be presented online via a Microsoft Teams session, which will require you to have access to a computer and Wifi. The session is anticipated to run for 1 hour including some time for questions (which may be submitted via the chat function). A Microsoft Teams link will be forwarded closer to the event.The presentation is due to commence at 7.00pm AEDT. You will be able to submit any questions during the presentation via chat, but we do ask that you keep your microphones muted throughout. We will try and get to as many questions on the night, but please note that we may not have time or we may not be able to answer specific questions in the group environment.
Ticket link

SUCCEED Tube Feeding Picnic

You are invited to join SUCCEED for the fourth annual SUCCEED Tube Feeding Picnic. They will be celebrating Feeding Tube Awareness Week and launching their Tube Friendly Cafe initiative. Bring a rug and your favourite formula, blended food and/or oral snacks. There are facilities on site and they’ll play games, have music and just hang out. Date: Sunday 11th February 2024 Time: 10am – 4pm Where: Mortdale Community Centre (**new location**) 2b Boundary Rd MORTDALE NSW 2223 RSVP: Anyone touched by tube feeding a child is welcome. They would love to know numbers please so RSVP here. If your numbers change a bit on the day that’s ok! RSVP for the picnic

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Feeding Tube Awareness Week is an awareness raising campaign of ausEE Inc., a registered Australian charity. The content of this site is not influenced by its supporters or partners and a link to a site, external contact, story, resource or group from this site does not imply that it is endorsed by ausEE Inc.
​Feeding Tube Awareness Week® was first created by the Feeding Tube Awareness Foundation, a United States of America 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, to increase awareness of feeding tubes and enteral feeding. In Australia, ausEE Inc. hosts Feeding Tube Awareness Week, each year nationally to raise awareness for those living with feeding tubes.
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Site last updated: 18 March 2024