Brightwater at Home

Our Brightwater at Home service looks after over 1,000 clients over the age of 65 in the Perth Metropolitan area to live well at home. The service is funded to deliver Home Care Packages (HCP), Commonwealth Home Support Packages (CHSP), transitional care, privately funded services and interim hospital packages. Brightwater at Home is also funded to deliver a Regional Assessment Service in the East area.

In 2020/21 Brightwater at Home became part of Brightwater’s commercial operations team, creating opportunities to work closely with our retirement village, catering and linen services.

Expanding our services

In 2020/21, we successfully won several tenders to expand our services. This included hours for allied health and personal care in the South, the provision of ready-made meals for CHSP clients and more transitional care packages.

We also introduced an in-house reflexology service and increased our dietitian hours for clients.

Restructuring our service

This year, we restructured the role of our service leads with the aim to build a strong clinical framework and to expand our clinical services.

We expanded our allied health team, and are looking to implement specific wellness programs, including a falls prevention program for clients.

We also commenced the trial of a new scheduling model, which is focusing on developing teams to work in hubs. The goal is to improve efficiency and effectiveness of delivery consistency of staff, improve care and enhance client satisfaction.

COVID-19 impact

The COVID-19 pandemic continued to have an impact on our business in 2020/21. This included the importance of reviewing our clinical governance processes to ensure we could respond appropriately and rapidly as required.

We put in place continuity plans regarding service delivery if staff were unwell, as well remote working measures, which required the setup of new technology. We increased training of all staff in PPE donning and doffing and infection control and increased our communications with clients and their families to provide regular updates.

Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS) in home care

In 2020/21 the Serious Incident Response Scheme was introduced in residential aged care and there is potential for a similar scheme to be introduced in home care in the future. In February, Brightwater at Home was part of a trial and focus groups were held to explore the need to introduce consistent safeguards for older people living in the community.

Rayma lives at home in Perth’s North and receives support from Brighwater at Home in the areas of personal care, domestic assistance, social support and also attends our weekly jam music program.

This year she also got a very special wish granted, thanks to our ‘Light up a Life this Christmas’ fundraising appeal.

86 year old Rayma has a strong connection with the Perth Zoo. Her father lived in a house there when he was a child in the early 1900s, and he would often tell Rayma stories of waking up to the sound of the big cats.

Rayma was treated to a day out at the Perth Zoo – including a number of special close encounters with the animals including feeding Tricia the elephant and the Galapagos tortoises.

Rayma’s family said that they are not only very happy with Brightwater’s level of care but can see improvements in her overall wellbeing.

Meet Rayma

We deliver:

- Over 4,600 hours per week in Community

Support Worker direct care services - Over 600 services per week through allied health and clinical support