Nursing home wins award for GLBT policies
A privately owned aged-care provider has been recognised for its work fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for its residents regardless of sexuality or gender identity.
The Anita Villa nursing home in Katoomba, run by the Riviera Health group, won the ‘strategy to promote the mental health and wellbeing of residents with special needs’ category in this year’s Positive Living in Aged Care Awards organised by the Aged and Community Services Association of NSW and the ACT.
Riviera Health’s Dr Michele Chandler told Sydney Star Observer they were bowled over by the win.
“We were really proud to win it,” Chandler said. “A lot of providers in aged care have a religious basis, so to get this acknowledged when it’s a taboo subject is really important.”
Chandler said the winning Safe Space at Our Place project had come out of a process of consultation and learning for the company and its staff.
“We have two nursing homes in the Blue Mountains, and for the gay community it’s an attractive area — particularly for those who are aging,” Chandler said.
“We were getting a lot of enquiries from people in same-sex couples who were seeking aged care and were quite frightened about what that might mean.”
Chandler, who had been involved with ACON’s Aging Disgracefully strategy, started talking to local groups like Pink Mountains and the Three Sisters Club to understand what could be done to provide culturally appropriate care and make people feel safe and welcome.
With some training provided by ACON, staff reached out to the community by marching in the 2009 Mardi Gras and by having a stall at
Fair Day which enabled them to talk to community members and get a better insight into people’s fears and expectations around aged care.
Chandler also attended a Gender Centre retreat to gain a better understanding of issues facing trans people.
The resulting project has seen changes to everything from the forms Anita Villa uses and the way residents are addressed to the pictures it hangs on the walls.
For Riviera Health, the changes have been good for their bottom line.
“People are saying, ‘If they can look after the LGBT community and let them be themselves, we can go there and be ourselves too’, ” Chandler said.
“Being an inclusive environment has had massive spin-offs for the company.
“Inclusiveness is what aged care should be about. Anyone should be able to walk into a nursing home in the area they live and get the care they need and want without any prejudice.”
Riviera Health is now looking to extend the project to more of its nursing homes in NSW.
Still here, and all bullshit, they have no lgbti policy now, new management didn’t have any idea about this when i asked.
PLEASE IGNORE THIS ARTICLE
This article should be removed as Riviera Health no longer owns this facility and this page is very misleading. I hate to think of people being influenced to become a resident at Anita Villa after reading this article. The new manager I spoke to after 3 emails and two phone calls when I finally got to speak too her, knows nothing about care for LGBTI people and there has not been any speciaised training since 2010 ( ACON ) and none planned for the future. I spoke to her on the phone and she spoke of elderly LGBTI people as ” that group of people”. Enough said, do not be influenced by this article. it is obsolete and has been for quite a while ( over a year or more). The new management have no knowledge about the needs of elderly LGBTI people.
This is fantastic. So many horrible homophobic things happening in nursing homes, that they would make Stephanie Rice look like Mother Theresa.
This is really positive news that needs to be promoted far & wide.