11 September 2018 —
Despite my Russian start to life, winter is my least favourite time of year and I’m very happy it’s now over. We’ve had plenty to brighten up our winter months and bring us cheer, with Hero’s Wishes being fulfilled, our Senior MasterChef Challenge and a host of other events and activities around our different locations.
It was a great pleasure to be able to fulfill the last wishes from our first round, with Joan’s visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens completing our Hero’s Wishes. Thanks to the generous donations made, both financial and in-kind, we were able to fulfill all requests in this first round (with a few adjustments).
Hero’s Wish is now open to receive new wishes, and we look forward to helping make dreams come true for more of our veterans and war widows.
Industry fund HESTA runs awards for various industry sectors, including aged care. We were very pleased that our nomination for the Hero’s Wish program was one of just three finalists in the Team Innovation category. This is the second year that we have been a finalist in the HESTA Aged Care Awards, demonstrating what industry experts think of the programs we offer.
On behalf of the whole organisation, I would like to thank staff, volunteers and visitors for your support in keeping flu away this winter season.
With our new staff flu vaccination program, we now have good data about the numbers of staff members vaccinated and the number who are not able to on medical grounds. We have seen increased staff vaccination rates at all locations, and we will be looking at the sites which achieved the highest rates (congratulations Frankston South) to learn from them and to build on this next year.
We are seeing changes in demand for our independent living units with a growing need from younger veterans, that is, those under 60. The current board strategy is to maintain single-storey unit villages and to move away from all two-storey ILUs. As part of this strategy we discontinued admissions to the Hawthorn ILUs a number of years ago, and as the number of residents has now significantly dropped, we will be assisting those residents still there, to relocate to suitable alternative accommodation.
I would like to assure our community that we are committed to looking after our tenants and finding them appropriate accommodation that they are happy with. This may be a difficult time for some residents and we will do all we can to help them and make this transition as easy as possible for them.
Once the relocation is complete, the Hawthorn sites will be put up for sale and funds raised will be used to meet the current and changing needs of the veteran and war widow community.
Tuesday 7 August was the inaugural ‘Aged Care Employee Day’ to recognise the 350,000 Australians who work in the aged care sector and to thank them for the work they do.
Every person here is vital to the effective running of Vasey RSL Care, 24 x 7, 365 days every year and it is important to make sure that every staff member is valued for the work they do. And that leads me to…
Over the last few weeks, we were accepting nominations from our whole community for those staff who demonstrate our values and promises in their work. The awards will be presented at the conference on 25 October.
Thank you to everyone who has made a nomination this year and good luck to all the nominees.
Janna Voloshin, CEO
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