Blog
Words by Melissa Williams, Manon Tickle and Kal Fitsch
This year, Zebras Australia turned five.
Since our inception, we have been building a different kind of healthcare experience for people living with chronic and complex conditions, one that is grounded in the belief that people deserve to feel seen, understood and supported in the fullness of their lives.
In our earlier years, so much of our time and energy was spent proving that this kind of care could exist. And now we find ourselves asking different questions. How can we be more consistent? More accessible? More sustainable? How do we grow our impact without losing the essence of what we do?
Over the past 12 months, our team continued to care for thousands of people across Australia while strengthening the foundations that make that care possible. We moved into our new home in Abbotsford, a space designed to better reflect the accessibility, warmth and care we want people to experience at Zebras. Alongside this, we invested in our people, systems and ways of working, continued to refine our model of care, expanded opportunities for learning and created new ways for our community to connect with us beyond the consulting room.
Each year, we become clearer about what growth means to us. It is not simply seeing more people or doing more things.
Perhaps one of the things I am proudest of this year is seeing Zebras become bigger than any one person. Across our team, people are stepping into new roles, sharing knowledge, mentoring one another, building new programs and taking greater ownership of the organisation we are creating together, and we are still learning.
This blog dives into the ways Zebras has grown and changed over the 2025-26 financial year. If you’d prefer to read about our impact in a page-by-page report version, you can view the PDF version of the Impact Report here.
Our team
Over the past 12 months, 23 humans have been part of the Zebras team, working across five states and territories and bringing together a wide range of skills, perspectives and lived experience.
Our clinical team includes 14 practitioners and around them sits our broader support team, including Client Experience, Healthcare Liaison, Marketing and Leadership.
Throughout the year, we continued to offer a range of roles and working arrangements designed to support different lives, capacities and stages of career. More team members than ever worked with us in full-time roles, while several existing team members also increased their hours. We invested in the people behind the care through regular training, professional development, mentoring and supervision.
We also continued our monthly team wellness sessions, partnered with ANSA to strengthen our approach to workplace wellbeing and brought our full team together for our annual retreat – an opportunity to step away from the day-to-day and spend time together as humans.
As Zebras grew, we continued to strengthen the structure around our team.
During the year, we created new roles, including promoting Manon to Marketing Coordinator and Kal to Digital Marketing Assistant as well as developing our leadership team. These changes helped create clearer ownership and stronger support across the organisation.
We welcomed three new practitioners to the Zebras team – Harry (Physiotherapy), Nick (Exercise Physiology) and Melanie (Osteopathy).
Daisy relocated interstate to join us in Melbourne, and we farewelled Bree, Charlotte and Claudine with gratitude for all they contributed during their time with us. We also celebrated another first, as Julia became the first member of our team to take maternity leave. Despite this natural movement, our team remained highly stable across the year, with a 95% overall retention rate.
Our annual team survey provided another important measure of how our people experienced Zebras: 93% felt valued, 93% felt supported in their roles and 82% felt their workload was sustainable.
Community
The people who find their way to Zebras rarely fit neatly into a single box. Many are navigating long and complex healthcare journeys, fluctuating capacity and multiple overlapping conditions. They may have spent years searching for answers, moving between providers or trying to make sense of symptoms that do not always fit neatly within traditional models of care.
Our enquiry data reflected that complexity, with many respondents identifying with a combination of physical, autonomic and mental health conditions.
- 59% identified with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (HSD)
- 42% with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)
- 31% with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)
Many respondents also identified with anxiety, depression and other overlapping conditions.
We received enquiries from six Australian states and territories, reflecting the reach of our community beyond Victoria. Over the past 12 months, we welcomed 302 new clients into our care, while our online community grew to more than 19,500 people across our platforms.
We want the people who come to Zebras to feel heard, involved in their care and supported to move towards what matters to them. In our 2026 Community Survey:
- 97% felt listened to and taken seriously
- 97% said their care reflected their goals, priorities and capacity
- 100% said their practitioner adapted their approach when something wasn’t working
- 91% felt their care had helped them make progress towards what matters to them
Based on responses received from 32 participants.
They also said:
“A safe place where I feel seen and heard.”
“I really value that the practitioners at Zebras treat me as the authority on my own body and experience and that care feels like a collaborative exercise.”
“From my first appointment I felt fundamentally understood, and not judged…”
“Your reception team have been incredibly welcoming and helpful. From the first intake form and then stepping into the clinic it felt neuro-affirming, LGBTQIA+ inclusive, and accessible.”
Clinical Care
Over the past 12 months, we delivered 7,458 consultations across our services, an increase of approximately 23% compared with the previous year.
This included:
- 4,273 Physiotherapy consultations
- 1,266 Exercise Physiology consultations
- 947 Occupational Therapy consultations
- 890 Osteopathy consultations
We also delivered 1,380 consultations through our virtual clinic – more than double the previous year – helping people access care beyond the walls of our Melbourne clinic.
Alongside one-to-one care, we also delivered 1,591 group movement classes, up from 1,388 the year before.
Interdisciplinary care remained at the heart of the Zebras model. Rather than asking people to navigate each part of their health in isolation, our practitioners worked across disciplines to share knowledge, coordinate care and adapt support as people and their needs changed.
Our 2026 Community Survey reflected the way people accessed that model. 75% of respondents had seen two or more Zebras practitioners, including 34% who had seen three or more.
People also accessed care in different ways, with some attending entirely in person, some using telehealth, and others combining both. This flexibility helped us support people across different locations, circumstances and capacities, while keeping care connected around the person rather than the individual service.
Education and Professional Learning
Limbr
Through our sister company, Limbr Collective, we delivered the first Holding Hypermobility course in our new Abbotsford space, an in-person offering created to help health professionals build confidence supporting people across the hypermobility spectrum.
Professional development
Across the year, we also continued to share our knowledge more broadly, delivering education to clinics, organisations and health professionals on topics including hypermobility, POTS, fatigue and trauma-informed care. We also presented to ADHD Australia on hypermobility and neurodivergence, helping extend conversations about complex and overlapping presentations beyond our own clinic.
Altogether, these education activities reached more than 40 health professionals.
Connection and Advocacy
Throughout the year, we continued to create opportunities for our community to connect beyond individual appointments.
With The Dazzle
In February, our annual Zebruary awareness campaign brought attention to the realities of living with chronic and complex conditions, culminating in our first ever With the Dazzle community day.
Created in partnership with Conscious Combat Club, With the Dazzle is designed as a low-pressure, accessible day for adults living with chronic and complex health conditions to connect with others who genuinely understand.
After months of planning, we welcomed 31 people for a day of creative activities, gentle movement, lived-experience storytelling and time together.
Stripy Makers Art Club
We also continued our monthly Stripy Makers Art Club, an occupational therapist-led creative space designed to support connection, participation and play. Across the year, 58 people attended nine sessions, exploring everything from crochet and decoupage to fidget-making and cookie decorating.
Practitioner open day
We also continued to create opportunities to connect with health professionals and contribute to broader conversations about care.
In October, we welcomed 24 health professionals into our Abbotsford clinic for our Practitioner Open Day, offering a chance to experience the space, meet our team and learn more about our interdisciplinary approach.
In June, we attended the Australian POTS Foundation Converge Conference, where members of our team contributed to two panel discussions exploring models of care and lived experience. The conference also gave us the opportunity to connect directly with people living with POTS, health professionals and organisations working to improve awareness, diagnosis and support.
These opportunities allowed us to share what we are learning, listen to the experiences of others and contribute to a wider movement towards more connected, collaborative and person-centred care.
Partnerships and Recognition
In 2026, Zebras Australia became an official partner of the Australian POTS Foundation, Australia’s patient-led organisation dedicated to improving advocacy, support, diagnosis and understanding for people living with POTS. Our partnership reflects a shared commitment to improving care, connection and awareness for people living with dysautonomia.
Alongside this partnership, we continued our relationship with Sodii and were proud to be redesignated as an Ehlers-Danlos Society CORE Network of Excellence for the third consecutive year.
We were also honoured to be named a finalist for Multidisciplinary Team of the Year in the Australian POTS Foundation Clinical Excellence Awards.
Looking to the Future
We will continue to listen, reflect and change course when we need to. We will keep asking what good care looks like. Because Zebras has never just been about delivering healthcare; it is about creating places where people feel they belong. It is about challenging the idea that complexity is something to be avoided. It is about building something that makes room for change, connection and hope.
To our community: thank you for continuing to trust us. To our team: thank you for the enormous amount of heart and courage you bring to this work. And to our partners, collaborators, families, friends and supporters: thank you for continuing to walk alongside us.
