Annual Report 2005 - UnitingCare NSW.ACT

Community Care
Our services include day programs that help people adjust to
their situation while remaining in their own homes.
During the year UnitingCare Ageing Wesley Mission
Region gained eight new HACS programs – which are
jointly funded by the State and Federal governments.
These programs included a dementia day, shopping trips,
respite programs and dementia monitoring support.
A new Dementia Day Centre was also established at
Tuggerah on the Central Coast.
UnitingCare Ageing Western Region expanded its
Community Service Programs in Dubbo, Broken Hill and
Wagga Wagga and is a major participant in the innovative
pool program established by Federal Government, which
aims to care for older people with an intellectual disability
in a community setting.
The Hunter, Central Coast and New England Region,
which has 50 per cent of clients in community care,
established a comprehensive men’s health program for
isolated men in the Hunter Valley. Further north, a Living
with Memory Loss program has been established by
the North Coast Region at Ballina, funded by Alzheimer’s
Australia and the Commonwealth Department of Health
and Ageing.
Other community activities include Men’s Shed. Sydney
North Region initiated Men’s Shed in Australia with a
program at Lane Cove in 2001, in conjunction with Lane
Cove Council and supported by Royal North Shore
Hospital. The program assists older men by providing
them with an opportunity to interact and socialise and to
work with their hands.
This year Sydney North Region has mentored the
formation of a Men’s Shed program at Forestville in
conjunction with Forestville RSL and the Lions Club,
which will be operated by the Ku-ring-gai Region; at
North Sydney, North Sydney Rotary and North Sydney
Council are supporting a Men’s Shed which is due to
open in October 2005. Sydney North Region also
operates a Men’s Shed program at Bowral in conjunction
with the Bowral Uniting Church and Wingecarribee
Men’s Health Association.
The community’s increasing preference for communitybased
care and programs is reflected in the 40 per cent
of clients of UnitingCare Ageing who are being serviced
through a broad range of community care programs.
Many of these programs reflect our social justice paradigm
and focus on the needs of the isolated, homeless and
people living with specific healthcare needs. We are
particularly concerned to support frail older people with
early memory loss and severe dementia as well as people
living with mental illnesses. Many of these services are
day programs and involve our staff and volunteers helping
people to adjust to their situation while remaining in
their own homes.
Our community care services cover the full continuum
of care and include independent living units (ILU’s),
community aged care packages (CACP) extended assisted
care in the home (EACH), and home and community care
services (HACC).
18 UnitingCare Ageing Annual Repor t 2005 19