Covid-19 Grants – helping our community through tough times

Keeping families connected at Karingal

Karingal Seymour is the community-owned aged care home providing accommodation and caring for older people in the Seymour community and surrounds.  Its 60 residents are looked after in  low, high and specialist dementia care.

The Covid-10 pandemic and its stay-at-home restrictions made it very difficult for many residents and their families, especially for those whose family members did not live locally. To help overcome loneliness and disconnection, the Seymour District Charitable Fund helped Karingal to purchase two new reconditioned iPads which made a world of difference for many residents.  Staff helped families keep in touch, have face-to-face online conversations and participate in family life from a distance. 

Helping Goulburn Options provide more options

For Goulburn Options Disability Support Services Covid-19 pandemic restrictions meant supporting their participants in a whole new way. All group services for participants were immediately suspended with the non-profit organisation reviewing the needs of every person and family to create person-specific services.

All services were initially delivered at a ratio of 1 to 1 with staff using their own vehicles to transport one participant at a time and each staff member was rostered to the same participants as much as possible to eliminate cross infection. Work from home wherever possible became the norm and meetings with external stakeholders were conducted remotely.

As COVID-19 persisted Goulburn Options had to find ways to reduce the isolation for participants. Many participants were restricted to their homes where they were extremely lonely and families were put under significant stress.

Goulburn Options built-up delivery of supports using virtual connections with cooking, yoga, music, art and discussion groups all carried out online via Zoom. To make this work really well GO needed more suitable and better IT equipment. For example, to stream a cooking class effectively required a camera on a tripod rather than a laptop, and a microphone that allows the chef to move around and still be heard clearly by viewers.  Having a camera that recorded was also important so that aspects of the class could be edited and then played on demand.

Many clients also needed to attend appointments with medical professionals and allied health personnel. These consultations were carried out from the GO office, again using Zoom. Unfortunately, the existing office computer screens weren’t equipped with cameras or microphones so GO staff were sharing one webcam and one polycom speaker.

GO realised every admin desk needed a camera and microphone so that staff could easily connect to external meetings, carry out participant appointments virtually, check in with community stakeholders in a personal way, and communicate easily with other staff who are working remotely.

Seymour District Charitable Fund supported Goulburn Options to buy new IT equipment to help the organisation through Covid-19 and beyond. Although pandemic restrictions were eased, many participants are reluctant to fully engage with group work and prefer to continue with the virtual services.  There is now more choice for participants – they can come to group sessions at the GO office or they can stay at home and log-in, watch and interact.

Bec Staring, GO’s Business Manager, said the new IT Equipment has been a welcome addition to their desktops for a number of reasons.

“With all our desktops now equipped with a camera and speakers we can now have more than one online meeting happening at once, which during this past year has been a necessity.  The equipment has been used for different types of meetings including but not limited to, board meetings, implementation meetings for software packages, information sessions and workshops for management staff on a range of subjects.  The most beneficial component of having sufficient IT equipment is that we can support our families to attend their online medical appointments, which is not always possible to attend from home due to either the family not having a camera on their home computer or no internet or computer at all.

There’s no doubt that the new IT equipment has enabled GO to be better connected to the wider community and we are providing more options for participants.”