COVID-19 PANDEMIC RESPONSE KEEPING OUR STAFF AND RESIDENTS SAFE
The unexpected arrival of COVID-19 into our lives in
to make sure that they were safe. Residents who felt
February 2020 posed a major challenge to the way
they would benefit from friendly social contact were
that Evolve Housing operates, but our team quickly
able to sign up for a weekly phone call from their
adjusted and continued to provide high-quality
Housing Manager. Similarly, our Evolve Housing for
support to our residents.
Youth team has been running a phone chat hour every Thursday so that young residents who are
To protect the health of our residents and our staff,
feeling isolated are able to phone in and talk.
we made visits to our offices available by appointment only from early March. During this time, our whole team
The economic downturn caused by the pandemic
continued to work remotely and have consistently been
has had a strong negative effect on many residents’
available by phone and email to respond to enquiries
household finances. Evolve Housing is dedicated to
as usual.
doing all we can to mitigate this impact.
We also launched a new easy-to-use online
Our Support Team has been hard at work providing
maintenance request form during this period
emergency food packs and support to pay for food,
to enhance our service provision without needing
rent and utilities if needed. There has been a 30%
in-person contact. The form allows residents to
increase in referrals to our Support Team, who have
digitally report any maintenance issue and has
noticed that more clients are feeling isolated, while
an option to upload photos. It was also translated
others have needed assistance to source essential
to Arabic and Vietnamese, which are the two
items like toilet paper, rice and pasta.
most common languages spoken by our residents after English.
Our Opportunity Pathways program has remained operating and is playing an important role in helping
Our Housing Managers performed welfare checks over
residents who have recently lost their jobs to find new
the phone to all of our residents at the beginning of
work, upskill or re-train.
the pandemic to ensure that everyone was coping well with the changes to everyday life such as government
Residents were kept up-to-date about the changes
restrictions.
to the way we delivered our services, and also about support services that may be useful to them during
They also asked each resident about their support
the pandemic, via our newsletter, e-newsletter and
needs and if there was any extra assistance Evolve
social media pages.
Housing could provide to help them. We also made changes to our internal operations with When a resident was not able to be contacted via
a successful rollout of a working-from-home program,
phone after a few attempts, their Housing Manager
increased hygiene measures and practising social
visited them in-person, observing COVID-19 guidelines,
distancing protocols in the office. | 57
