COVID-19 pandemic response

COVID-19 PANDEMIC RESPONSE KEEPING OUR STAFF AND RESIDENTS SAFE

The unexpected arrival of COVID-19 into our lives in February 2020 posed a major challenge to the way that Evolve Housing operates, but our team quickly adjusted and continued to provide high-quality support to our residents.

To protect the health of our residents and our staff, we made visits to our offices available by appointment only from early March. During this time, our whole team continued to work remotely and have consistently been available by phone and email to respond to enquiries as usual.

We also launched a new easy-to-use online maintenance request form during this period to enhance our service provision without needing in-person contact. The form allows residents to digitally report any maintenance issue and has an option to upload photos. It was also translated to Arabic and Vietnamese, which are the two most common languages spoken by our residents after English.

Our Housing Managers performed welfare checks over the phone to all of our residents at the beginning of the pandemic to ensure that everyone was coping well with the changes to everyday life such as government restrictions.

They also asked each resident about their support needs and if there was any extra assistance Evolve Housing could provide to help them.

When a resident was not able to be contacted via

phone after a few attempts, their Housing Manager visited them in-person, observing COVID-19 guidelines, to make sure that they were safe. Residents who felt they would benefit from friendly social contact were able to sign up for a weekly phone call from their Housing Manager. Similarly, our Evolve Housing for Youth team has been running a phone chat hour every Thursday so that young residents who are feeling isolated are able to phone in and talk.

The economic downturn caused by the pandemic has had a strong negative effect on many residents’ household finances. Evolve Housing is dedicated to doing all we can to mitigate this impact.

Our Support Team has been hard at work providing emergency food packs and support to pay for food, rent and utilities if needed. There has been a 30%

increase in referrals to our Support Team, who have noticed that more clients are feeling isolated, while others have needed assistance to source essential

items like toilet paper, rice and pasta.

Our Opportunity Pathways program has remained operating and is playing an important role in helping residents who have recently lost their jobs to find new work, upskill or re-train.

Residents were kept up-to-date about the changes to the way we delivered our services, and also about support services that may be useful to them during the pandemic, via our newsletter, e-newsletter and social media pages.

We also made changes to our internal operations with a successful rollout of a working-from-home program, increased hygiene measures and practising social distancing protocols in the office.