EXCLUSIVE: The Neighbourhoods of Care serves to support multiple Anglicare sites in a number of Western Sydney neighbourhoods, with a central hub based at its Rooty Hill Village to provide additional care to its residents, as well as home care services to local residents in the Blacktown region.
Other residents of Anglicare’s community housing Arista in Mt Druitt, and its Social and Wellness Centre, a day respite and overnight respite centre based in the Village.
The SOURCE exclusively reported in November last year that Anglicare was, with the backing of the Department of Health and Aged Care, trialing a full care offering from inside its Woolooware Shores Retirement Village, 20km south of Sydney’s CBD.
In addition to the "Lighthouse" home care trial which is designed to provide greater in-home care for independent retirement living residents commencing in Q224, Anglicare is also trialing a multi-site neighbourhood model of care, called "Beacon".
The project is driving a one team approach for those in the Neighbourhood and those supporting the projects, including new roles added to the on-site team such as a Clinical Case Manager, and five new Neighbourhood Care Workers, in addition to the existing Anglicare Home Care team all brought together on site at Rooty Hill Village.
“For a village like Rooty Hill, that may not have the same scale of larger villages, we needed to develop a model that could provide residents with the same benefits of on-site care offering provided on an expanded scale across multiple sites and the wider neighbourhood,” say Cassandra Mathews (pictured), Anglicare’s Chief Executive of Seniors Living said.
“Attracting and retaining home care workers is a critical challenge for our industry, and this model provides a new offering that is attractive to care workers. By bringing together a multi-skilled team into a neighbourhood team, we’re providing a better experience for our employees as they are able to work together, collaborate, seek support from RNs on site for complex needs, as well as providing more stable hours working as a team.
“Residents at Rooty Hill Village have embraced the trial and they’re enjoying having the expanded hub team on site.
“The increase in village residents accessing the onsite care has been a combination of residents who had wanted care and can now access support due to our increased capacity, as well as residents who have chosen to switch providers to access our on-site team.”
The funding model relies on existing home care funding streams and factoring in potential future changes to the Support at Home Program.
“As the focus on ageing in place continues, models like these that find new ways to increase capacity by attracting new workers, improve customer experience and provide care that meets our residents ageing needs is critical. The early signs are positive, and it’s wonderful to be able to provide more care for the many residents that want to remain in their home as their needs may change,” Cassandra said.
The trial is running to April 2024.
Anglicare CEO Simon Miller is one of 40 C-Suite speakers at the 2024 Leaders Summit in Sydney on 19 & 20 March