8 Life & Love
Tuohy Aged Care home is located in Midland, in Perth’s east.
Jayne’s passion for supporting the rights of each person at Tuohy is what drives her approach to care. She ensures everyone at the home gets treated with the same amount of dignity, respect and privacy. “I advocate for the residents because they can’t advocate for themselves, and they sometimes get taken advantage of,” she said. “As long as I know I’ve done what’s in the best interest of the resident, I can go home and sleep at night.” Award-winning care Jayne and her team have been working closely with community organisation GLBTI Rights in Ageing Inc (GRAI) since 2015, to deliver diversity training to staff.
“Everyone has a place at Tuohy, and we all support each other” not in contact with their family. This approach was recognised with a second Better Practice Award for the team in 2017. Jayne said she is incredibly proud of how far the home’s staff have come in going above and beyond in their approach to care. Vision for the future Now that the home’s LGBTI inclusivity training is rolling out, Jayne and her team have got their sights set on their next endeavour.
This exceptional program focused on supporting older people of diverse genders and sexual orientations, and led the home to win a 2015 Commonwealth Better Practice Award for innovations in resident care.
“We’re doing a lot around dementia care at the moment, Mina and I have created a dementia link team with relevant industry and community representatives,” she said.
Tuohy have recently rolled out an internal inclusivity training program, and the home is working towards the accreditation for the nationally recognised Rainbow Tick Standards.
“We recently did some training from Alzheimer’s Australia around dementia, so Mina and some of our nurses and carers and I all took part. We learned more about how dementia affects people, and which activities can be purposeful for them.
The Standards are approved for organisations that are committed to safe and inclusive service delivery for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. The team have continued to implement new initiatives, such as the My Life, My Wishes program, which aims to document the funeral requests of residents, particularly in cases where people are
“As part of this, we have launched a story book project, where we put in a resident’s family tree, pictures of them when they were younger, and their memories of when they were younger. It becomes a keepsake for the family if the person passes away.” “We want to keep progressing and improving the ways we care for people.”