From the CEO - residents come first

Welcome to our second newsletter which we hope gives you an insight into the active lives of our elderly residents, as well as an overview of how our work makes a difference to helping people age healthily and happily.

Currently the Productivity Commission is holding an inquiry into Australia’s human services with a focus on “innovative ways to improve outcomes through introducing the principles of competition and informed user choice whilst maintaining or improving quality of services.”

At OCAV, residents play an important part in shaping the services we provide. They lead the way in choosing activities for each village. They support each other through volunteer efforts. Our residents and staff flourish as a result of the relationship we have with each other.

The stories in this newsletter highlight how our work puts the older person at the centre of all we do. Our residents are not statistics. They each have their own story to tell and their own lives to lead. While we do provide essential services, we also provide compassion and commitment to ensure they receive the care and support they need.

Over the past few months we have contributed to the ongoing debate about how we, as a retirement and aged care organisation, can work to reduce the incidence of elder abuse. We’ve also put in place a new approach to ensure our residents, who have early signs of dementia, are able to stay in their own homes for as long as possible; and we have been working with the Housing for the Aged Action Group to advocate for the rights of older people in independent living; as well as recently celebrating the opening of our refreshed community centre in our Braeside Park village.

These three initiatives, among many, are all aimed at achieving our Vision 2020: OCAV is a leader in our industry; we assist more older Victorians with our affordable retirement options, and we ensure OCAV is a happy, vibrant place to live and work.

We are seeing important successes because we put our residents’ interests first, we have high quality staff and we are delivering best practice services.