Over the last year, we celebrated the joy that can come from getting older – from doing handstands at 90 to getting married in your 80s. We learnt what to eat as we age and discovered the secret ingredient at Chorus Kitchen. We also talked about living with dementia and discovered that homelessness is not reserved for young people. 90% of the people we have supported later in life are aged over 65, with 54% aged over 80. Our Home Care Packages have expanded from predominately south metro areas to the northern corridor of Perth this year, reaching as far as Butler.
Chorus Kitchen cooked thousands of fresh meals, which were delivered by our team of volunteer drivers.
“Chorus Kitchen is much more than a meal delivery service; it’s really about social interaction,” said Gigi Warren, Team Lead at Chorus Kitchen. “It’s about checking in and asking how our customers are going. It’s about asking the question, ‘How are you today?'”
Stopping for a chat or a cup of tea is all part of the service. For some customers, that conversation could well be the only human interaction they have that day.
“Because we deliver fresh meals to customers more than once a week, and because the retention rate of volunteers is very high, we get to know the customers quite well,” Gigi said.
Chorus Kitchen, which operates out of Palmyra, Kwinana and Albany, also has dining rooms where customers came together regularly to catch up over lunch.
A group of Chorus customers visited the Bright Futures Children’s Services Family Day Care Centre.
Organised by Paula Cronan, Team Lead Community Connection at Chorus in Kwinana, the series of visits were inspired by experiences overseas, which show intergenerational interactions help both the children and the older people taking part.
Paula was thrilled with how well it was received by both young and old.
“We put three or four children in groups with each customer to do some activities they’d like,” she said. “We’d matched the customers and children by their personalities and interests.”
“The customers just loved it. For a lot of them, their families are over east, so they don’t have a lot of contact with their grandchildren, or their grandchildren have already grown up and there are no young children around.”
The Chorus customers enjoyed a singalong, had morning tea, played games, and gave out cupcakes baked specially by the team in the Chorus Kitchen as small gifts.
“It’d bring tears to your eyes watching it,” Paula said. “And then each time they came back from the centre, our customers would start talking, reminiscing about their own childhood, their children, Christmases.
“It just made their day; it really did. They all asked me afterwards if we were going to continue doing it throughout the year.”
The visits inspired one customer to pick up his harmonica so he could create music with the children.
“Afterwards, he said, ‘Thank you so much for asking me to bring this, because I haven’t played it for ages and I forgot how much joy it brings me’. Now he brings it every week.”
“It’s something different,” said Paula. “It’s a fresh approach. Instead of doing the same things over week in, week out, it’s something interesting for our customers to do. It brings back a lot of happy memories for them.”
“It gives them something to look forward to. You can see them planning as soon as we get back from a visit, ‘What can I do with them next time?”
Chorus customers Kevin and Elizabeth celebrated six months as newlyweds in their 80s.
“I wanted to be with Elizabeth very, very much,” said Kevin. “I knew that there was a lovely relationship to be had between the two of us, but I didn’t really want to just live together. It needed to be deeper than that for me.”
A lack of respect for older people can stem from a perception that they aren’t engaged in productive activities. The couple love their garden and Chorus supports the couple so they can remain in their own home, and also maintain their beautiful garden.
During COVID-19, Our House social centre’s Friday mixed group walked along the foreshore, went shopping, played scrabble and enjoyed swapping library books.
Toilet rolls were a hot topic during COVID-19 and Chorus Kitchen was interviewed by Channel 7 News on 16 March about how we were adapting to COVID-19 by adding toilet rolls to our meals run.
Our Albany team was also featured during this time in the Albany Advertiser when office staff stepped in to help at Chorus Kitchen due to reduced volunteer numbers.
Chorus customer Ray, who turned 92 this year, played the ‘Last Post and Rouse’ to commemorate ANZAC Day.
He first played this in 1941, when he just 13 years old in front of a gathering in Queens Park, Perth. He was employed to play music at the Embassy Ballroom in 1946 and has been fortunate enough to play with greats such as Nat King Cole and Pat Boon.
Ray has been playing the trumpet for 82 years now and there’s no sign of stopping, he still plays in two bands and coaches young players.
Louise Forster asks Jason Burton about the dementia journey – what dementia is, what we know about it and how it develops.
“People often get confused by the term dementia and how it relates to Alzheimer’s disease in particular,” says Jason. “It is very much an umbrella term that covers a whole range of neurological conditions, over a hundred different conditions that affect the brain. The most common of those conditions is Alzheimer’s disease.”
It can take four or five years to get a diagnosis of dementia. “If you are worried about your memory or somebody’s memory, go and see your doctor. We know people delay going to see the doctor,” says Jason. “There are lots of things that can cause cognitive problems that actually can be cured.”
Perceptions of dementia do not marry up with the reality. Many people think those living with dementia are old, frail and living in a nursing home. But in fact, 75% of people living with dementia live at home and benefit from being part of a community.
“The distress and suffering we see in people living with dementia isn’t because of the pathology of the disease. It’s because of the people and community and societal response to the world that that person’s now living in,” says Jason.
Sarah cares for her mother Blanche who lives with dementia and talked to Louise Forster about transitioning Blanche into care and the importance of home to them both.
“I have seen transition care and the standards are not great,” said Sarah. “I knew my mum would find that environment really distressing. So, in that week I spent a lot of time driving from nursing home to nursing home that had vacancies.”
Sarah had to quit her job to care for Blanche. “Workplaces need to be particularly flexible and understanding,” she said.
Finding joy in the sadness has helped Sarah build resilience. “There are lots of really funny moments and you really need to…hold onto them because they’re what keeps you going.”
Dan and Lou reflected on the importance of flexibility in employment and the economic value of unpaid carers.
“There’s some really interesting work going on in that space to try and recognise the value that it creates,” said Dan. “If that was visible in the economic data, then we would make a lot of different policy decisions.”
“We need to rehumanise the system. What that starts with is the one-on-one relationship that Jason (from Dementia journey part one: Finding joy) spoke very eloquently about, is that when I’m sitting here looking at you as a person with dementia and thinking that you are somehow different from me, that’s where it starts to break apart.”
Andrew received an eviction notice. He was 84. His friend and caregiver Karen contacted Chorus and Frances Sheehan RAS Assessor went out to see Andrew. She was concerned and surprised at what she found.
Andrew wasn’t able to keep up with the maintenance of his property, and the living situation had become unsafe and highly unsuitable for his needs.
“I just think the house needed to be knocked down to be honest,” she said.
Andrew was also facing eviction. He and Karen were under pressure to find a solution.
Andrew was able to move into a new home that had been researched by Gloria Sanchez, Customer Service Coordinator, and the Chorus team, allowing his transition to be as smooth as possible.
“We got approval for him to move in that week, so going from total despair to [asking ourselves] what are we going to do, to a life changing moment for Andrew where by Friday he was moved in, and we never looked back,” said Karen.
Older homeless people are less visible than other homeless people as they are less likely to be living on the street but increasingly some seniors are facing insecure housing.
“It’s stories like this that make me proud to work for Chorus” said CEO Dan Minchin.
The ‘Growing Together’ project at Piney Lakes Community Garden encourages local seniors to grow vegetables.
A Stockland CARE Grants program has enabled Chorus to create an accessible garden so that people do not have to bend over to plant and harvest.
This project is a collaboration between Stockland Bull Creek, the City of Melville and Chorus Bull Creek Social Centre. Special thanks to volunteer Tony for looking after the garden and for the beautiful produce.
Chorus Support Worker Rachel discovered a customer’s love of horses and arranged a special visit to HorsePower Australia.
Prepped with a kilo of carrots, the Chorus customer fed all the horses before going on a carriage ride. They enjoyed a picnic lunch and even met Baldivis MP Reece Whitby MLA.
The ladies were blown away by how welcoming the HorsePower volunteers were and Rachel described the experience as incredibly moving. A huge thank you to HorsePower Australia for having us over for such a special day.
The Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) contacted our Chorus North Perth Gardening and Home Maintenance team about a customer facing eviction due to the state of his backyard.
Hoping to prevent a senior’s eviction from his home, the Chorus team – Chris, John and Andrew – completed a safety check and made quick work of transforming his backyard into a safe environment.
Eat, drink – and dance! We kicked up our heels and did some twirls on the dance floor at the Chorus Social Centres’ Christmas get-together at Secret Harbour. It was great to catch up with friends from across all our centres, as well as make new friends.
The Chorus Kwinana Seniors Group visited the Bright Futures Children’s Services day care as part of their inter-generational playgroup. Everyone popped a Christmas cracker, joined in on the holiday-themed colouring in, and shared some festive food.
Chorus Kitchen cooked up a festive Christmas lunch for 100 Melville seniors – making it the biggest function the team has ever catered for. Customers kindly said it was the best food they’d ever had at a Christmas party. A big thank you to Santa Maria College students, as well as Chorus staff Kamisha, Donna, Ashley and Vivienne for volunteering their time and making such wonderful waitstaff.
Chorus partnered with Stockland Shopping Centre and Bull Creek Lions Club to celebrate Chinese New Year. Customers celebrated the start of the Lunar New Year with traditional Chinese dancing and singing, Chinese calligraphy, a Guzheng (Chinese string instrument) performance, a Tai Chi demonstration and a ‘Lo Hei’ – a salad toss up meant for good fortune.
Mandurah customers took part in the Out and About Games, aimed at reducing loneliness and isolation in older people. The two-year pilot program is funded by the WA Primary Health Alliance.
Mandy, Barbara, Geoff, Del, Alan and Judy formed the Chorus team, dubbed the ‘Out and About Outlaws’.
“It’s lovely when you don’t go out much to have an opportunity to get out and meet new people and reconnect with the outside world,” said Mandy.
The trial program is empowering older people by helping them tap into the compassion that already exists in their community.
“Out and About is not about pushing services or support or models into the community, it’s about inviting people to empower themselves to get involved in their community and work together to develop their own kind of connections,” said CEO Dan Minchin.
Getting out and about is great for our mental and physical health. This year the Chorus Bull Creek Social Centre customers enjoyed a three-day trip to Augusta.
The group went on outings every day and highlights included The Berry Farm, Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse and a scenic boat ride with Augusta River Tours.
Bull Creek and Kwinana groups celebrating Senior’s Week.
