We’re excited to announce the newest member of our team, Sally Middleton.
Sally brings a wealth of village experience in customer engagement, customer support and hands-on experience and knowledge of the retirement living sector.
Sally joins the DCMI team as our Client Engagement Leader and will be responsible for further building our relationships with the DCM Institute’s participants, and supporting them to meet their professional development goals.
Welcome Sally.
Last month we wrote about elder abuse being a key focus for the NSW Retirement Village regulator. In this edition we share some insights and resources.
Monday was World Elder Abuse Awareness Day and the CEO of Dementia Australia, Maree McCabe said:
“Based on international indicators, it is likely that between two per cent and 14 per cent of older Australians experience elder abuse in any given year, with the prevalence possibly higher during a time when people living with dementia were isolating at home.”
Some of the warning signs of elder abuse to look out for include:
Here are some hotlines that have trained professionals that can assist you with your concerns.
Elder abuse has been recognised by government and the village sector as an important component of the resident services that Village professionals provide. It is expected that operators have the required Elder Abuse policy and procedures to guide village professionals in these matters.
This will be especially so in becoming Code of Conduct compliant and/or striving to achieve Accreditation.
DCMI Village management professional development participants have access to templates for Elder abuse policy and procedures in the online Resource Bank. Check out our new DCM Institute portal here.
Unanimously feedback received from Village Managers across the country has been a desire to have a ONE STOP SHOP to seek support and resources relevant to their roles.
In a revamp of the new DCM Institute website the COVID 19 resource page has been bolstered with the introduction of a new Industry Links page enabling Village professional access to quick links in relation to:
Along with the existing COVID -19 page, these resource pages provide a great place to seek information in a quick and timely manner.
As does the Industry News section of the new website. It allows busy village professionals to search for past items of interest that may have appeared as topics in past Village Manager newsletter.
We recently discussed the importance of emergency plans, and that more regulations are being developed across the country.
Again last week in Sydney at the DCM Professional Development Day, we had Kathleen Ng and David McElhone (pictured below) from the leading law firm MinterEllison run through new NSW regulations coming our way.
They had these points on the slide above that we thought was a good reminder of the minimum steps that need to be taken while you are doing a full review of emergency strategies and procedures.
Note the ‘once a year’ for safety inspections and evacuation exercise. Have you done yours?
Chris
