David Panter, Chief Executive of ECH, one of South Australia’s largest village and care support providers, tells us that their village residents stay out of aged care homes five years longer than the rest of their age cohort.
That’s despite the average age of entry going up from the mid-60’s to the mid 70’s over the last 15 years.
So what’s making the difference?
Taking the hassle out of people’s lives
ECH now stands for Enabling Confidence at Home. David says living in a village home takes the hassle of property maintenance and budget management out of peoples’ lives, with ECH charging a fee that covering virtually all of their expenses apart from food.
“Those are two of the biggest factors which create a burden for the children of older parents and lead them to make a decision that now is time for mum or dad to go into residential care,” he says.
But more importantly, he says it’s the sense of neighbourliness that villages provide: “It’s the comfort that people get and the confidence they gain by having somebody else looking out for them.”
A change for the better
ECH has now adapted their services to see if they can offer the same advantages to people who want to stay living at home.
They are building more serviced apartments for people in their late 80’s and early 90’s and working with architectural companies to convert homes into duplexes so owners can live in one and rent out the other. They also help their clients to access loans to refurbish them so they can carry on living independently.
For people in need of affordable housing – usually women over 60 – they have created a home share scheme where they match clients to suitable accommodation.
But David says they know people’s biggest fear of living independently is being lonely. To counter this, they provide tablets to their clients to use Facebook and Skype and run a peer volunteering system where members can offer to do services for each other.
It’s inspiring stuff. If you would like to hear more about what ECH is doing, you can watch a video of David below.
