Covering the Distance
How COVID has affected our work at Hepatitis SA
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n February 2020, as the likelihood of the COVID-19 pandemic hitting Australia was increasing, Hepatitis SA started planning. What would our service provision look like, in the event of COVID-19 cases increasing in South Australia and restrictions being put into place. Each team was tasked with brainstorming how the changes would impact on their work, and how each team would adapt to restrictions, which at the time were largely unknown.
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A planning meeting of Hepatitis SA staff was held in early March 2020. Staff who work at the Hackney Office met to discuss what the next 6 months might look like. While much of our work can continue away from the office such as resource development, report writing and future work planning, other services like the Hepatitis Helpline, Clean Needle Program (CNP), as well as workforce and community education, were areas which needed to be thought through. As the CNP, Admin and IT Support required staff to be in the office, it was agreed to have a roster of skeleton staff attend the Hackney Office to ensure continuation of these programs. We amended the processes in which clients would collect their equipment, ensuring there was a 1.5m distance between the client and staff member (see p13), as well as additional cleaning of surfaces.
As is usually the case, the phones would be answered by staff onsite and any Helpline calls would now be transferred to the coordinator of Hepatitis SA Helpline & Support Services, who would be working from home. Our IT and communications system had to be “pivoted” to accommodate staff working from home. Take-home equipment had to be prepared for people who needed them and registers set up to track them. The question of internal staff communication was discussed and software to substitute face to face interaction was trialled and set up. While the education team very nimbly adopted an easyto-setup software so they could continue delivering their sessions (more on that later), a Google account was set up for staff to share files remotely. Meanwhile, work began on setting up an integrated organisationwide communication and file
Hepatitis SA staff and their executive assistants during a Zoom meeting
HEPATITIS SA COMMUNITY NEWS 86 • July 2020
