21 August 2017
The Australian Aged Care Quality Agency (AACQA) run annual awards for better practice in the aged care sector. The awards were announced at their conference in Sydney on Thursday and we were delighted to win two Better Practice Commendation Awards.
The AACQA Awards are highly prestigious and are awarded for projects, initiatives or programs that act as exemplars for other aged care service providers to assist and to encourage improvement to care and services. The Awards recognise and disseminate better practice and innovation across the broad spectrum of aged care services.
The awards received were for the ‘Memories Through Music Program’ at Vasey Brighton East, and for our submission, ‘Living Our Values & Promises’, an organisation-wide award.
The ‘Memories Through Music’ was inspired by US social worker, Dan Cohen, who developed a program to enable those with memory loss to listen to music that had personal meaning for them. He put customised playlists onto iPods so that the music would reawaken lost memories from their past. Staff at Vasey Brighton East were inspired to set up their own program, which has involved ensuring that staff are aware of and understand the concept, educating families about it, and having family members help create the personalised playlists for their loved ones.
Bentleigh RSL have been very generous in providing headphones and iPods for this program and many individuals have donated iPods, headphones, iTunes cards and money to make it all possible. The program continues to grow and reach more of our residents.
‘Living Our Values & Promises’ documented our long-term project to improve engagement with our community – residents, clients, consumers, staff, volunteers – to better understand needs and develop collaborative strategies for the future of the organisation. Our Values and Promises were developed from the research undertaken for this project and they form the basis of our service delivery.
“I am delighted that the AACQA has judged our organisation to be worthy of these two awards, says Janna Voloshin, CEO. “They made only 30 awards across the whole of Australia and about half a dozen in Victoria, so to win two is a major achievement and recognition of the quality of care we provide to the Victorian community.”
Vasey RSL Care has won a total of nine AACQA Better Practice in Aged Care awards over the past five years.
“It makes me very proud to be leading Vasey RSL Care: I would like to thank everyone involved with the award entries and all our staff for the way they support our Values and Promises so that we can offer quality services, with residents, clients and consumers always at the centre of what we do,” says Janna.