C h ristade lph ia n A g e d C a re
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S P R I N G
N E W S L E T T E R
C ASA M IA
Address: 28 Alma Road, Padstow NSW, 2211
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. ISAIAH 61:1 1
Phone: (02) 8707 6010
Email: admin@chomes.com.au
Manager’s Message Welcome to Casa Mia
Dear Families, 2017 is flying by and I am ready to welcome Spring. It will be so nice to see some warmer weather and say goodbye to Winter. Some of you may already be aware that Lily Kam, our Care Manager, has decided to retire. Lily has been at Casa Mia for more than 30 years and her hard work and dedication will be missed. I have recruited Beant Sodha into this position. Beant has worked at Casa Mia as a Registered Nurse since 2011. Beant is well qualified for this position, having a Bachelor Degree in Nursing and a Masters of English. If there is anything you need from Beant, please don’t hesitate to ask her. As you are aware, we have seen a number of residents with influenza in recent weeks despite receiving the Flu Vaccine. During this time, we liaised on a daily basis with the Public Health Unit and took advice from them in regards to managing this outbreak. This was a difficult time for everyone and we thank you for your support and understanding. Whilst Spring is now here, it does not mean that the Flu Season is over. We would ask that if you are unwell that you please do not visit your loved one to help prevent a further outbreak. We also ask that you wash your hands with hand sanitiser when entering and leaving the Home. We will be having a High Tea on Wednesday, September 27. Please pencil the date into your diaries as we would love to see you there. You will see invitations around shortly. Wishing all the dads a Happy Fathers Day! Kind Regards, Sharon Fletcher
News & Upcoming Events UPCOMING EVENTS SEPTEMBER SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
4 Shirley McQuade 1 Gloria Murphy
2 Heather Orrock
6 Brian Wolverson
3 Geoffrey Mayers
4 Ernest Hawksworth
15 Abrahim Moge
11 Olive Evans
6 Christina Berquist
24 Joyce Beaven
12 Nina Sadowski
14 Aubigney Thornley
13 Margaret Wightman 15 Stamatia Nicolitisis 16 Helena Dewhurst 17 William Creighton 17 Jean Clinch
18 Nancy Mayers
29 Lillian Atkins
20 Ruth Gibb 22 Jean Ambrose
Tickets $5 available at Reception RSVP by Friday September 22
3rd - Father’s Day 13th - Entertainment: Patrick Brady 20th - Entertainment: Kane 27th - Big Annual Function High Tea at 11am 27th - Pet Therapy
OCTOBER 4th - Entertainment: Heather Honey 11th - Family Morning Tea 18th - Entertainment: Stan Ellis 25th - Pet Therapy
NOVEMBER 7th - Melbourne Cup 8th - Family Morning Tea 8th - Entertainment: Patrick Brady 15th - Kris’s Feathered Friends 22nd - Catholic Church Mass at 10.30am 22nd - Memorial Service at 2.30pm 29th - Pet Therapy
Activity Reviews RESIDENT ART EXHIBITION JUNE 14 Our resident Art Exhibition was held on June 14, with our residents proudly showing off their paintings they had worked so hard on. They practice and hone their skills at our weekly painting with Jack each Wednesday morning. Residents enjoyed sampling cheese platters and drinking out of champagne flutes, as well as being served by staff dressed as butlers.
DISCOVERING ENGLAND June was the month we discovered England. We had a big morning tea with mouth-watering scones with jam and cream, made by the kitchen, which never fail to please the residents. The dining room was filled to capacity when Amy (RAO) walked in dressed as one of the Queen’s guards. Many of the residents insisted on getting their photo taken with her as she looked so good. We learnt a lot about beautiful England and many of those present had been to visit and had lots of stories of their own. Lesley (from the kitchen) normally dresses as the Queen and parades around with her bodyguard, but that week she had been ill and couldn’t join us for the morning tea, so our Queen’s guard did the honours. Brian remarked that Amy was the best looking guard he’d ever seen.
Activity Reviews DISCOVERING AMERICA - THANKSGIVING To really get to know a country would take more than a couple of hours, so the part of history we focused on this month for America was Thanksgiving. The RAOs dressed as a Pilgrim and an Indian girl and sat around a campfire talking about this special event. There are many stories about that first sit down meal, and even if it happened at all, but we will stay positive and believe that it did. The story is that the pilgrims were trying to make a go of farming and hunting in a very harsh and unforgiving land and many of them were starving and dying. The Indians felt sorry for them and stepped in to help the Pilgrims. They then had a feast every year to commemorate this event and called it Thanksgiving. The turkeys came much later but the kitchen were kind enough to supply some turkey and cranberry jam rollups (toasted) for the residents to sample. We then asked the residents what they were thankful for and their answers are as follows: ✦ ✦ ✦
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The water that we drink Food, clothes Health Hospitals and good doctors Children Good health Being born in this time Electricity A clean bed and a roof over our heads
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Family and friends Someone looking after my pet cat Grateful for prayer Being born in Australia The world we have and the creatures in it Being alive and living in a free country Having wonderful carers
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For life itself 91 years of age and still living Grateful my daughter found Casa Mia Love and support of family Medicare Living in peace after coming from a country in war
Activity Reviews PJ DAY JULY 21 Residents at Casa Mia got to see the staff in a different light on Friday July 21. Some staff dressed up in their best pjs for the wonderful National PJ Day to help raise money for children in foster care. The residents had a morning tea with activities that included pass the pillow, designing their ideal bedroom and also a bedtime quiz, followed by some hot food and yummy birthday cake, as this day also fell on our residents’ monthly birthday celebration. The residents were very pleased with the gifts they received such as bedtime fluffy socks, beanies and earmuffs, all to keep them cosy and warm over the cold nights. We raised $100 from gold coin donations. Thank you to all those who participated.
Activity Reviews LITTLE HELPERS VISIT Over the last couple of months, we have been so lucky to have been visited by the Little Helpers. They are a group of around 13 children, along with a few mums, who visit nursing homes like ours and bring a little sunshine into the lives of the residents. The first visit was for Mother's Day and the children brought some beautiful woollen hats for the ladies. The second visit was to bring in chocolates and sing lullabies for everyone to celebrate Eid - the end of Ramadan.
On their latest visit, the children brought in Lego. We set tables up in the dining room with a combination of residents and children at each table and a pile of Lego on each, which were quickly constructed into many different designs. A good time was had by all, even though it got a little noisy with so many excited children. We always appreciate the wonderful work of our many volunteers.
Activity Reviews JEANS FOR GENES DAY AUGUST 4 Jeans for Genes Day was held on August 4 with staff wearing their best jeans and green t-shirts to promote and raise money for genetic research for the children’s foundation. The green t- shirts were worn to actively encourage our signature behaviour of “working together, achieve together”. The children’s foundation would like to say a big thank you for all donations Casa Mia raised ($70) for the foundation.
Pioneering program saving lives A pioneering new program that reduces hospital admissions and saves around $3.5 million a year is successfully up and running at Christadelphian Aged Care’s Padstow aged care homes. Connecting Care is a Bankstown Hospital program that brings hospital services into aged care homes and reduces the need for residents to have to endure ambulance transfers and lengthy hospital stays. Residents with illnesses such as infections can be treated with IV antibiotics, have blood tests and even x-rays all from the comfort of their aged care home. The program has been running for two years and regularly services Casa Mia Aged Care in Padstow and Southhaven Aged Care in Padstow Heights. Geriatrician Dr Frank Liu said the program had proved to be safer than hospitals and led to a reduction in mortality rates. “In patients in hospital with pneumonia we see a mortality rate of 24 per cent, but in this program it is only 7 per cent,” he said. “We come here and provide the same service in their familiar and comfortable environment, with the same carer they would see at the hospital.” The program had seen a reduction in around 300 hospital admissions a year, which saved the hospital around $3.5 million, Dr Liu said. “Each admission costs the Government $10,000 easily, and an ambulance costs more than $1100 for a return trip. Now emergency departments, ambulances and GPs are all referring to us,” he said. “Not many residents at this age want to go to hospital, but usually they have no choice. We give them the choice and most residents and families are happy to be treated at the nursing home.” Casa Mia’s Facility Manager, Sharon Fletcher, said the service not only helped residents but their family members as well. “Where appropriate, we offer to contact the hospital specialist and ask them to come out it, and it will be the same specialists as would have seen their loved ones in the hospital. They are amazed and feel reassured by that,” she said. “We know every day how lucky we are to have them.”
Resident Story - Kevin Pape Kevin came to Casa Mia in 2016 and is now the leader of our Bible Reading Group on a Tuesday morning. He was born in Waverley, Sydney and went to school in Liverpool. He had a few jobs after leaving school but then joined the Navy Defence where he worked for 40 years in Sydney. He met his wife through the Bankstown Baptist Church and he and Barbara have been married for 34 years. They had one son together, David, and occasionally they travelled together up to Brisbane to visit Kev’s brother or down to Melbourne to visit Kev’s mother. They had a kitten, Lucky, who belonged to the neighbours but preferred living with Kev’s family and a pedigreed Pekinese dog called Cindy that bred one litter of puppies. They had another dog, Bidy. “Oh! She was a villain!” said Kev. One evening, she was wobbling all over the place and the family was concerned she was ill. The next morning she was fine and they were relieved, but that evening, she was staggering and wobbly again! Worried that she’d eaten something strange that was making her ill, they questioned the neighbours who happy told the family “Oh! She’s the dog that comes down to the pub and the locals give her beer to drink!!”.
Staff News Lily Kam, our Care Manager, has decided to retire. Lily has been at Casa Mia for more than 30 years and her hard work and dedication will be missed. All the best for your retirement Lily!
FRIENDS ARE LIKE FLOWERS
love
1 John 3:18
Pastoral Care
Let us not with word or speech but with actions and in truth
Friends are like flowers, beautiful flowers Friends are like flowers in the garden of life
Many years ago, in my youth, I heard and learnt a song about friends being like beautiful flowers in our life. That song, at the time and still to this day, touched something in me and I find that I often look at a good friend and picture them as a beautiful flower. Friends can be a blessing that many of us take for granted as “just being there”. No matter what the occasion, an afternoon at the theatre, catching up for a quiet lunch or a quick coffee, a warm and familiar shoulder to cry on, friends are those people in our life who enjoy our company, never judge us and are always there for us. “The heartfelt council of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense” - Proverbs 27:9 But sometimes, due to circumstances beyond our control, friendships can end all too soon. Circumstances such as relocation, ageing, illness and death can leave us hanging like autumn leaves on a windy day – very sad and quite vulnerable. So where am I going with this? Working in aged care and spending a great deal of time having one on one visits with many a lonely resident can give a pretty good perspective as to how important friendships have been in years past. There are quite a number of residents who have little or no family visitation due to numerous reasons, but what they do have are precious memories which can be encouraged and brought forward. Memories not only of family but of friendships formed in the school yard, at the workplace, in the armed forces, with neighbours and with social groups. Some friendships would have been made at mother’s groups, during overseas travel or even at the local pub. Some were made easily while others took time, some were fleeting while others lasted a lifetime. But with every friendship created comes the memories of that creation. I recently had the privilege of spending forty very rewarding minutes with a resident who was feeling down and lonely. When I came into her room she said, “Oh, thank God, someone I can talk to that will talk back to me”. I felt both humbled and most thankful that I had turned left rather than right in the foyer that day. This dear lady sat and cried for a short time about her loneliness and told me how much she missed her family and friends. When I felt that she was ready, I diverted her to tell me about some of her memories as a child and teenager. I heard her tell of being raised by hardworking parents who loved their five children, of how they were raised with hand-me-down clothes and shoes, home haircuts, lard sandwiches, and shared bath water, that started with the youngest child and dad as the last. How they sat on the floor of the lounge room every night after dinner to listen to the radio shows they loved, and how on a Saturday night once a month a block of chocolate was passed around and shared. She recalled a special friend from school who Our deepest sympathies have loved to sleep over at her place so she could have a lard gone out to the families who sandwich as she never had them at home.
Bereavements
After 40 minutes of crying, reminiscing, laughing and hand holding I left my resident rather reluctantly because I felt as though I had been taken on a short journey and I wanted more. Taking the time to listen and encourage memories can be a rewarding experience for all parties, it can take such little to give so much. By Jan Murray, Pastoral Carer, Courtlands Village <— P.S. I saw this lovely lady as a Pansy – pretty, bright eyed (after the tears) and smiling.
“Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others” - C.S. Lewis
have lost their loved ones over the Winter period.
Volunteer Corner Catholic Communion visitors We have four dedicated local parishioners who come to Casa Mia every Thursday morning to share Catholic communion and bless our Catholic residents. We are very appreciative of Julie, Sam, John and John. Christadelphian Youth Devotion We have another group of volunteers, Christadelphian Youth, who have started coming once a month on a Saturday morning to do a Bible devotion and singing for the residents. Each month they focus on a different â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;fruit of the Spiritâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; from Galatians 5. Volunteer Annual Mandatory Education The next session for this volunteer training is scheduled for Wednesday October 18, 2017, 10:30am - 12:30pm. New topics we are covering include the new CAC drug and alcohol policy, our new Pulse cultural change program and an introduction to dementia.
Family and Carers of residents are invited to a
FAMILY MORNING TEA When: 2nd Wednesday of every month - 10:30am Where: Casa Mia Garden Gazebo Looking forward to seeing you there for a social chat and/or support if you need it.
If you are interested in joining the Volunteer program, please do not hesitate to contact me:
Cathy Strachan on 0435 814 411 or cstrachan@chomes.com.au Volunteer & Pastoral Care Coordinator
SPOTLIGHT ON A VOLUNTEER - Laura Anderson I was born and have grown up here in Sydney, with no future plans of moving elsewhere. I started singing when I was about 10, when my teacher brought in a guitar one time and before that, I'd never been tempted to sing at all! I got the hang of performing and sang at multiple school events but I didn't start accompanying myself on the guitar until I was 14, about a year ago. I began searching for places to perform and I was very keen on finding a place that I'd be able to help out, and in turn, be helped as practice in performing. Casa Mia allows me to stretch out beyond my music class at school and comfort residents in the process! To be honest, I really love it. I love the smiles on familiar faces - even new faces are very kind. I feel lucky to be able to perform. Even if a bit of music only comforts one person it makes my day! Thank you!
Read, Rest & Relax! SPRING CLEANING TIPS Finally, springtime is knocking at our door! After winter, we’re ready to swing open the windows and let the fresh air flow in. Spring is a season of renewal. Symbolically, it’s when nature comes alive again: blooming flowers, baby animals and cleansing rain showers! Many people grew up with a seasonal tradition: the spring-cleaning. It’s an annual reminder its time to clean house and de-clutter. For seniors, it’s a great way to shake the winter blues and reminisce. Many older adults are rejuvenated by the warming weather and sunshine. A cleanup confers health benefits as well: reducing symptoms of respiratory illness and risk for falling. A good cleaning is beneficial both physically and emotionally! Spring Cleaning To-Do List: Clean out bedside drawers and sort books/ magazines Open windows to circulate fresh air
De-clutter; remove objects that obstruct the flow of movement through the room such as unnecessary furniture Bust dust - don't forget photographs and art on walls, blinds, vents & light bulbs
FATHER’S DAY JOKES Q: What did the daddy tomato say to the baby tomato? A: Catch up! Q: Why are Fathers like parking spaces? A: The good ones are already taken! Q: Why did the cookie cry? A: Because his father was a wafer so long! Q: What did daddy spider say to baby spider? A: You spend too much time on the web. Q: Why did the baby strawberry cry? A: Because his dad was in a jam!
Lemon Delicious Slice • 50g unsalted butter, chopped • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract • 1/3 cup caster sugar • 1 tablespoon cornflour • 1 1/3 cups plain flour • Icing sugar mixture, to serve • • • • •
LEMON TOPPING 4 eggs 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon rind 1/3 cup plain flour 1 1/3 cups caster sugar 2/3 cup lemon juice Makes 24 pieces
1. Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease a 3cm-deep slice pan. Line with baking paper, allowing a 2cm overhang on all sides. 2. Place butter in a large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on MEDIUM for 1 minute or until melted. Set aside to cool. Stir in vanilla and sugar. Sift flours over butter mixture. Using a wooden spoon, stir until a soft dough forms. Transfer to prepared pan. Press into pan. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven. Set aside to cool. 3. Make topping: Whisk eggs, lemon rind, flour and sugar together until smooth. Add lemon juice. Whisk to combine. Pour over base. Bake for 15 minutes or until just set. Cool completely in pan. Dust with icing sugar. Cut into pieces. Serve.
Spring Riddles Find â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Spring relatedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rhyming words that match the clues. 1. What flowers do that rhymes with mud
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2. What flowers do that rhymes with room
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3. What plants do that rhymes with pout
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4. A spring blossom that rhymes with hairy
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5. A spring flower that rhymes with hill
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6. What birds lay that rhymes with legs
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7. What a bird builds that rhymes with best
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8. What eggs do that rhymes with match
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9. What farmers plant that rhymes with weeds
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10. A month in spring that rhymes with remember ________________________
Disclaimer: All photos and stories have been published with consent of relatives and residents involved. Thank you for your submissions.