SPONSORED CONTENT
With Aged Care Employee Day celebrated nationally this month, it’s an important time to reflect on the service and dedication to senior Australians given by so many truly caring people across the country.
People like nurse, Ingrid Allen, who has been providing care to those in the Ballarat district
for more than 25 years now.
Ingrid continues to derive great satisfaction from helping older Australians to stay living independently and well in their homes in regional Australia.
“I enjoy the clients and being out in the community,” Ingrid says.
“Aged care is a great area of nursing to work in. I enjoy getting to know the clients and caring for them.”
Ingrid said she takes a lot of pride in her work, and derives pleasure from the big and small wins along the way.
“I have lots of proud moments, such as being the one who gets to tell a client their wound has healed, or they no longer need our help as they are able to be independent with their care.
“I also especially try to make the clients laugh, so when that happens it makes me feel proud that I could brighten their day.”
After 25 years of service, Ingrid has a few words of wisdom for others in the industry.
“Understand that older people are just people who are old,” she said.
“Don’t treat them any differently just because they’re old. Old age is a privilege and it’s a privilege for us to look after our older community.”
Each year, not-for-profit integratedliving Australia recognises their outstanding staff members in two sets of awards. They acknowledge long-time staff such as Ingrid in their Staff Service Awards, for those who have worked for the organisation for five to thirty years. They also recognise outstanding contributions of their team in their annual Values Based and CEO Principles Based Awards. These awards go to team members who best represent the organisation’s core values of Respect, Integrity, Equity, Diversity and Leadership over the previous 12 months.
They also seek to celebrate and thank their staff in other ways throughout the year, including telling their stories – and those of their clients – through touching videos, such as the ones linked to below produced for Aged Care Employee Day.
So often at this stage of clients’ lives it is the little things that make the biggest differences. With a focus on preventative healthcare so that people can stay living independently in their own homes for longer, integratedliving staff have many stories about how they’ve supported different clients to achieve this across regional, rural and remote Australia.
One of the most touching ones in recent times involves a couple from the North Hunter region. The wife needed an electric bed with a certain type of mobility, and the husband needed a different electric bed. But the size of both beds meant they couldn’t fit in the same room, and had to be put in two separate rooms.
Yet, this meant they couldn’t do what was most important to them – to hold hands when they went to bed.
“So we put our thinking caps on,” said integratedliving Social Worker, Amelia Luke.
“…And thought about what we can do for this couple. And with reshuffling the furniture around, creating a dressing room in a separate room, we were able to get the two beds back together.”
“That was so important to them so it was amazing,” Amelia said. “It’s these little things that you can’t pick up from a file review, but from speaking to the clients, that was what was most important to them.
“That’s one of my favourite stories,” she says.
You can hear more about this, and other touching moments in these special videos below.
To find out more about integratedliving Australia, you can visit integratedliving.org.au or call 1300 782 896.
Unsung Heroes video – link: https://youtu.be/CuVJH_NU_Pc
Truly Caring video – link: https://youtu.be/Qj-0Qp_PsDE
