Mother’s Day Love to Be Shared Thanks to Anglican Care’s Newest Permanent Resident - Zoom!

Despite the COVID-19 visitor restrictions in place, Mother’s Day love and joy will still be celebrated at Anglican Care on Sunday – but in a virtual setting.   

Over the past several weeks, Anglican Care has brought today’s technology front and centre within their facilities, with Connecting Generations encouraging communications between children and residents with lots of artworks and letters uploaded to the website for residents, Connecting Families a zoom call program for residents (with over 200 bookings in the first week) and Connecting Volunteers  aimed at encouraging music volunteers to develop programs that can be placed on line for residents to listen to and watch.

Connecting Families has been expanded to include Mother’s Day on Sunday.     

“We recognise Mother’s Day this year will be very different for everyone, including our staff, residents and their family members. We have moved quickly to ensure that special connection is made and maintained,” said Kylie Jacques, Marketing Manager at Anglican Care.   

A number of pre-booked zoom calls can be made for each of Anglican Care’s residential aged care homes by family members via an on-line program.   

“We are expecting a high demand from families wanting to see mum or grandma on Mother’s Day, and we encourage them to book early, but also to ensure they are together as a group when they zoom rather than book multiple calls. We will attempt to facilitate as many as we can, but there will obviously be a limit on the number of zoom calls we are able to get through,” said Ms Jacques.   

For those residents who miss out on a zoom call, there is still the “old-fashioned” telephone. Anglican Care encourages families to phone the home of their loved one at any time on Mother’s Day.   

“Together with zoom and telephone calls Anglican Care will be accepting Mother’s Day care packages and gifts at the Front Reception of our homes with visitor restrictions still in place but will ensure it gets to the mum it needs to,” she said.     

Anglican Care’s Connecting programs have grown exponentially as the need has increased during the COVID-19 crisis.   

“We really want to say a huge thanks to children in the Hunter, Central Coast and Mid Coast regions who have been sending so many lovely letters and artworks to our residents. They have brought so much joy to everyone. We would really encourage the letters and artworks to keep coming,” said Kylie.  

Zoom has become the go-to communication platform world-wide, and now its standard across Anglican Care’s residential aged care homes with more than 200 bookings for the Connecting Families virtual communications in the first week alone.   

The family of Manfred from CA Brown Lodge has certainly made use of the new way of seeing Dad.   

“Since zoom went live in our facilities Manfred gets a call like clockwork at 11am every day from his wife and daughter. They take him on tours of the house and garden and have been very appreciative of being able to see him at these difficult times. 

The joy and happiness when he sees them is palpable,” she said.     

Anglican Care’s Connecting programs are at the core of delivering communications to residents, their families and the wider world as we all continue to adapt in this new world. 

Find out more about Anglican Care.

Pictured: Manfred Hellwig Zooming with his wife and daughter