About OLD | changinggears

Changing Gears was established by Mission Australia in 2011. In 2016, Mission Australia ceased delivery of this program giving Linda Jane permission to deliver the program as an independent business. Linda Jane is the Director of Janeway Pty Ltd.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY

The engagement of Linda Jane from Changing Gears evidences the best practice response to educating new road users to understand road safety behaviours.

The Changing Gears framework is a tried and tested with great success and outcomes, delivered by experienced and skilful facilitators.

Changing Gears is an outstanding program that assists young people to gain their drivers licence in a way that speaks their language.

This program offers a fun and interactive environment where each young person learns how to have a shared responsibility towards road safety and what is the best practice towards road safety.

“Linda Jane, a Changing Gears trainer, has worked seamlessly with Vic Deaf support workers in creating an innovative, appropriate program, with a visual approach to classroom learning.

The most recent ‘Changing Gears’ program returned an impressive result with 100% of participants passing their Learners Permit with VicRoads. There is currently no other organisation offering this type of service to this disenfranchised group of people.…”

Linda has been exceptionally accommodating to the needs of the students and worked well with staff in managing any challenging behaviour that arose.

As a result of the program, all our students successfully passed and are now in possession of a Learners Permit. Changing Gears has hence been a very valuable program to the Pavilion

Changing Gears staff were invited to run a pilot program with ten refugee young people. This is where our management discovered how establish this program was. It was conducted on a highly professional yet a practical scale with proper technology and rich material.

Feedback from our client’s stated they could have never achieved it without the program..…”

Linda Jane

Trainer

Linda started her career in driver education after a serious motorbike accident where she lost the use of her hands for 2 years. Wanting to teach drivers how to watch out for motorbikes, she spent the time completing her Driver Instructor’s license. Linda has successfully assisted 1000’s of Learner drivers in passing their Drive test.

For the past 10 years, Linda has been training large groups in driver education, in defensive driving and classroom-based learner permit programs for Murcotts Driver Excellence, METEC and Mission Australia.

Qualifications include:

Cert IV Training and Assessment

Cert IV – Small Business Management

Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)

Completed courses in behaviour modification

As director of Janeway Pty Ltd, she has continued the vision of Mission Australia through the Changing Gears program:

Assisting disadvantaged people and helping them move towards independence

Nichola Thompson

Trainer

Nichola is an experienced driver educator with a BSc Honours (first class) in Biomedical Science.

She was a workplace health and safety (WHS) trainer at Monash University for twelve years.

She has instructed and inducted students, staff and visitors in subjects as diverse as general workplace safety, tutoring, radiation, chemical management, laser safety, animal safety and quarantine management and has the commensurate qualifications.

Nichola is a certified Quarantine Management Officer and Disability, Harassment Grievance Adviser. She was Resources Coordinator, Health and Safety Officer and WHS committee chair at Monash Biomedical Imaging for six years.

Prior to that Nichola was a neuroscience tutor for medical students at Melbourne University.

Nichola is a mental health first aider, trained mediator and has a level two first aid certificate.

Project monitoring and evaluation

The intention of the program is for participants to achieve an understanding of the need to be a safe road user and to obtain their learners permit. Continual assessment of learning outcomes and participants feedback will contribute to the development of Changing Gears Program.

Average of 92% Pass rate