It started off as a bit of an office joke, council employees donning suspenders on Bob Abbot’s birthday to make light of the big fella’s bent for braces.

The idea stretched beyond the council’s girth and now the Coast will have its first Braces Day on October 7 to raise money for Butterfly Kids.

Butterfly Kids manager Leanne Walsh said with about 300 children in the Noosa area alone in need of care or support, any funds would help to provide respite care for families with disabled children.

“Government funding doesn’t assist all these families,” she said.

“(It) just doesn’t go far enough, there’s never enough respite care.”

She said the appeal was also to urge people to embrace the ability, not the disability.

Braces in a variety of fluorescent colours can be purchased from Heritage Building Society Branches from Caloundra to Gympie at the low low price of $5.

Butterfly Kids and its partner organisation Integrated Family Youth Services hope to raise $10,000 on Braces Day.

Money that could be used to build a respite centre on the Coast.

Bob Abbot took it all in good humour, but staff may have trouble getting him to don a bright pink pair.

Instead, the man who said he owns about “30 or 40” pairs of braces said he’d retain his more conservative approach in supporting the appeal.

“Butterfly Kids is a fabulous organisation and when they asked me I thought, ‘why not’,” Mr Abbot said.

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