Another Year Helping Out

Helping Hands Care Services

Helping Hands Care Services (HHCS) is a 24-hour, one-stop service for all your home and personal care needs. HHCS currently services the Great Lakes, Manning and Gloucester areas, and operate from offices in Tuncurry. The service is very flexible, with a team available to work around their clients’ schedules. HHCS provides the following services: Personal Care, 24-hour Respite, Domestic Assistance, Meal Preparation, Shopping, Transport and a range of other services.

Activities and Achievements

This year HHCS provided 11,900 hours of services to support 770 clients to maintain their independence and remain in their homes. 90% of clients were pensioners or veterans. This represents a decrease of more than 600 hours, which can be attributed to the loss of a great client of ours early in the reporting period. The sudden loss of Brian affected all of us, and for him to pass away so young was very sad. Fortnightly hours decreased from 470 to 458 hours this year. Despite this, Helping Hands has continued to provide a caring and professional approach to supporting our clients and their families during difficult times.

New partnerships were developed with the Royal District Nursing Service to deliver services on their behalf to the Great Lakes area, and with Hunter New England Health — Community Options Compacks Program, which enables HHCS to provide services to local people being discharged from Newcastle Hospitals. In addition, our long-standing partnership with Great Lakes-Manning Community Options was strengthened through our staffs’ unique experience and respectful approach with Detox Cleans. Importantly, HHCS’s partnership with Commonwealth Respite and Carelink Centre strengthened this year, with increased referrals for respite and sleepover services, staff participation in Carers Week activities and an invitation to contribute to Annual Planning activities of the service.

Finally, HHCS maintained our active membership of Forster Network Meeting, Tea Gardens Network Meeting, Taree Network Meeting and Manning Rural Referral Hospital Network. This year, Jo Little has taken on the role of Chair of the Forster Network Meeting. The service is now an approved provider for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) which rolled out in July 2016 with participants in NDIS being contacted by planners.

Helping Hands Building Service

Helping Hands Building Service (HHBS), formally known as Home Modification and Maintenance Service established in 1989, is funded by the Home and Community Care (HACC) Program and CHSP. HHBS provides specialised assistance to the frail, aged and people with disabilities (between the ages of 8–64), as well as their carers, to remain independent in their homes, thus avoiding unnecessary or premature admission to residential care or hospital.

We provide home modifications and maintenance work with a major emphasis on access, safety and independence. Our qualified, licensed builder and team of professional tradespeople perform all work to Australian Standards. HHBS offers a subsidised, reliable and flexible service to assist people with mobility and daily living.

Activities and Achievements

This year we completed a total of 2800 jobs that supported our clients to maintain their independence and remain in their homes. These jobs comprised of 75% Home and Community Care funded services, 23% Commercial work and 2% Fabrication services. We achieved consistency in referrals this year through established partnerships with local community service providers, Occupational Therapists and government agencies.

Our service completed a total of 12 major bathroom and access modifications, with 2 more approved for commencement. In addition, we collected client feedback on all Home Modification works completed and received 98% positive feedback on the timeliness, quality of service, cost and friendliness of staff. We have also maintained sound knowledge of local social infrastructure through active membership of Forster Network Meeting, Tea Gardens Network Meeting and Northern Region Access Meeting.

Our partnership remains strong with Many Rivers Regional Housing, which was established for building and maintenance referrals for local Aboriginal Housing properties. This partnership resulted in 20 completed referrals last year. We continue to provide lawn mowing and maintenance for the local community including aboriginal community members across the Great Lakes and Manning regions. In addition, the Aged Care Quality Review team were very impressed with our processes, organisational culture and service feedback from client’s and stakeholders, and we received and signed our new funding agreement with the Department of Social Services. Finally, we successfully moved into our new office upstairs with Tim Rees from WasteWell/Workplace Services and Amanda Chapman and Craig Rees from RRA.

Staff

This year 38% of our staff identify as Aboriginal. Dean Little, Beau Lowry and Ian Paulson completed their forklift license training. Dean Little, Hannah Thrippleton and Jo Little also attended the Northern Region Construction Meeting in Coffs Harbour throughout the year. Importantly, all of our staff obtained their First Aid certificate this year.

Mick Wilson, who had retired, returned to work for one day a week on a casual basis and it is fantastic to have him back on the team. And finally, Matt Little started his studies in Certificate IV — Business Administration and Kristie Smith started her Certificate III — Business Administration.

Partners

McNamara’s Frames and Trusses, Forster Locksmiths, Oz Craft Aluminium, Bennett’s Steel, One Steel, Reece Forster, Eagles Plumbing Forster, Tile Power Forster, Tuncurry Windows, Steven Donohue Plumbing, JAL Plumbing, Lakes Electrical, Andrew Nunn Painting and Decorating, Rod Kirk Wall & Floor Tiler, Tommy Taylor Floor & Wall Tiler, Scott Stewart Plastering, Tim Ward WetSeal Waterproofing, Costal Detailed Joinery, Pro Sharp, PT Trade Supplies, GAW Mowing, Cetnaj, Forster Mowers and Lumpy’s Landscape Yard, Commonwealth Carelink and Respite Centre, Tony Aldridge Plastering, Carpet One Forster, Intalink Therapy Solutions (they are referring both disability and aged clients for modifications), the Regional Assessment Team and Feros Care, KinCare, the Royal District Nursing Service, Commonwealth Carelink, Feros and Respite centre for building modifications for clients on packages, Occupational Therapists Jan Longfield and Ashley Main, Aboriginal Home Care and Many Rivers Regional Housing.

You can check out more of the Community Resources Annual Report by following this link: http://ow.ly/tcWV305QojY