As 2019 draws to a close UnitingCare’s Customer Experience & Innovation team has taken some time to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned, the people we’ve met, the problems we’ve uncovered, and the successes we’ve celebrated. If UnitingCare is to be the leading light of care model innovation for the aged by 2030, we know we have a long way to go, and that getting there will require transformation, rather than incremental improvements.
Luckily, doing radically new things is part of our DNA, and from Sister Olive Crombie (the first Blue Nurse) to Rev. Sir Alan Walker (the founder of Lifeline), our organisation’s rich history is full of people who sensed a need and responded decisively with action.
Here are some of our big learnings from 2019.
Being one of Australia’s 2.8 million informal carers is typically an intensely private, stressful, emotional, and tumultuous period of people’s lives.
If everybody who cared for a loved one in need stopped tomorrow, it would cost the Australian taxpayer almost twice as much to replace this care as we spend on defence (in 2015 the defence budget was $31.9 billion, while the replacement value of informal care was estimated at $60.3 billion). The importance of informal care to our country’s health system cannot be overstated; it simply could not function without it.
Despite the importance of carers they are for the most part invisible to formal care providers (UnitingCare included), with very little support available to those who selflessly provide so much of their love, time, and attention each year. In March of this year our team began a journey of discovery based on a simple question: how might we do more for the informal caregivers that are the unpaid backbone of our industry? The result was: www.mylightkeeper.org, a virtual companion and a guide through the experience of caregiving. In particular, Lightkeeper was designed for ‘sandwich carers’, for those providing care to both an ageing parent and to school-aged children. We’ve documented our experience in detail here.
For every problem in our world there are intelligent, committed, and dedicated people doing their best to address them.
We first met Jarrah Cohen of Nomad-VR in May of this year. Jarrah is young, ambitious, reflective, and is on a mission to improve the lives of those living in residential care facilities. A keen technologist with training in 3D animation and professional video game design, Jarrah and his co-founder Trent saw the potential of virtual reality to dramatically improve the lives of those in residential aged care. VR allows residents to reminisce, to explore their creativity, to laugh, to play, and to momentarily shed (in a meaningful way) the confines of their physical environment.
In what we understand to be a nation-first, Blue Care has partnered with Nomad-VR in a ‘train the trainer’ model, with Jarrah upskilling our staff in the use of virtual reality equipment so they can take our residents on virtual excursions all year round. We feel very lucky to have Nomad-VR as a partner, and are immensely grateful for the tireless work they do to provide aged care residents with meaningful experiences.
UnitingCare is full of selfless, tireless, and dedicated staff who regularly go above and beyond for our customers. Here are a few we bumped into in our travels in 2019...
Jo has worked for Blue Care for 12 years and loves her job. When Jo walks into a house she brings both deft clinical skill and an effortless and intricate understanding of the details of her client’s lives. Jo knows her client’s routines, can judge immediately what kind of day they’re having, and rattles off questions about kids and grandkids: asking about graduation ceremonies or the results of exams as she tends to their complex needs. Jo applies the ‘mum test’ to all those she visits, asking whether she is treating them with the dignity and attention she would want for her own mother, and one comes away from her immensely grateful that the world has people like Jo.
Naomi could navigate the hallways of the sprawling Toowoomba Blue Care residential facility with her eyes shut. Accompanying Naomi means stopping to chat to everyone, whether it’s the temporarily blind Gordon who continues to serenade other residents with his guitar, or Katherine who recalls with fondness her youth in the Scottish countryside. Naomi understands that it’s the collection of little details that together constitute the richness of life, is always on the side of the residents, and is forever searching for ways to do things better.
Heather runs Blue Care’s Senior Oriented Support program in Bowen, North Queensland, and is one of the most inspiring and passionate innovators our team has ever come across. As a participant in our self-guided Imagineer program, Heather was deeply reflective and philosophical about her journey from quality, to innovation: “Excellence and best practice is uncontroversial – it’s the current best, whereas innovation requires me to challenge and change things.” Heather recounted her experience to a captivated audience of 30+ staff in September, undoubtedly one of our highlights of the year.
Little changes can be decidedly powerful, and have a profound effect on both the customer and staff experience.
At this year’s BiiG Innovation conference, Kit Collingwood spoke about the need for radical reform through practical action. It’s usually argued that the case for transformation needs to be made at the executive level. Undoubtedly this is part of the story, but our team is rapidly gathering evidence that very minor, inexpensive, and simple to implement changes can have a profound effect not only on the customer experience, but also for the staff delivering the service.
One such example came out of 8 jam-packed days in Nowlanvil and Ingham, where our team worked with Blue Care staff to re-shape the transition into residential care through a process that’s become known as ‘two conversations and a box’. It involves a staff member visiting the incoming resident in their home prior to admission, having an open conversation with them and their family, and asking them to fill a box with meaningful possessions that can then be placed by staff around the resident’s new room to give it a more familiar feel.
This change is minor, but initial indications are that it’s making the transition experience smoother for both the incoming resident, and for staff who are able to quickly understand (and act on) preferences. UnitingCare’s service staff are always on the lookout for ways they can improve the lives of our customers, and in 2020 our team will be looking for more ways to empower them to do this.
Our service staff continue to be the best advertisement for UnitingCare, and to treat our customers with care and compassion.
In 2019 7,000 of our community customers and 2,000 of our aged care residents generously provided us with their thoughts on what we are doing well, and where we can improve. The voice of customer specialists within the Customer Experience & Innovation team continue to be the link between UnitingCare’s 400,000+ customers and our senior leadership.
Some of the positives that jumped out at us from the research in 2019:
"Most Blue care staff go the extra mile doing whatever task is assigned to them with a song and a smile, cheerfully patiently lifting our burdens."
"The best thing is the care and love I receive."
"Beautiful People. Caring People. Wonderful support and care."
Of course there were significant areas for improvement as well, with clients receiving care in the community frustrated by our struggle to consistently provide them with the same staff member, while residents of our facilities were most disappointed by the quality of food. In 2020 our focus is on helping managers to use the results of this research to drive meaningful and enduring change.
2019 was a difficult year for the aged care industry in Australia in ways that are wholly unprecedented. The royal commission's interim-report, titled ‘Neglect’ slams a system “characterised by an absence of innovation and by rigid conformity,'' a system “not built around the people it is supposed to help”. It is impossible to read the foreword of this interim report and not to hold grave fears for our grandparents, our parents, and our future selves.
2020 will see our team build outward. The problems faced by the aged care industry cannot and will not be solved by a single provider. They are systemic; a jumbled mess of economic policy, regulation, ageism, workforce problems, and an obstinacy on the part of incumbents.
We will be drawing on a wide network to help us identify, define, explore, and address these problems.
To join this network and to receive periodic updates on our work, please click here.
For now, though, UnitingCare’s Customer Experience & Innovation team would like to thank you immensely for all the support you’ve shown our team in 2019.
Whether you are a Blue Care nurse spending your days divided between in-home visits and the open road, an ED nurse in one of our hospitals, a customer service representative taking calls in our customer service centre, a volunteer cashier in one of our Lifeline retail stores, a social entrepreneur working hard to change the ageing experience, an external who acted as a sounding board for our team throughout the year, or one of the dedicated staff members at 192 Ann St. who support the work of our 17,000 staff and 9,000 volunteers, we thank you!
We thank you for inviting our team to share in your challenges and successes, for being open to trying new things, for working hard to overcome the many obstacles that change brings, and most of all, we thank you for everything you do to care for our 400,000+customers: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year.
Until 2020,
The Customer Experience & Innovation Team.
