Message to all our consumers

Published

March 30, 2020

Our absolute priority is the health, safety and wellbeing of our consumers, volunteers and employees.

I want to reassure you that at Uniting we are taking every effort to limit the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus) while continuing to support people that need us at this time.

We provide many essential services and are taking all steps to deliver these services safely, while continuing to support people that use those services.

We have a pandemic plan in place, which includes guidance for all our workforce. This guidance makes clear that they must follow government instructions at all times, specifically:

  • Following all hygiene instructions, regarding hand washing and using hand sanitiser
  • Not visiting anyone if the consumer or worker has any flu-like symptoms
  • Asking screening questions before going into anyone’s home
  • Maintaining physical distance of at least 1.5m to the extent possible to deliver the service
  • Finding ways to support that are not face-to-face unless absolutely necessary.

Where possible, we have moved to deliver services by phone or screen-to-screen.

Where we engage third party providers to deliver services (such as in-home care), we have taken steps to ensure their compliance with these instructions.

In our residential services, staff are undertaking daily deep cleaning and we also have 24/7 access to a professional cleaning service that can be used at any Uniting location that requests it.

As of today, we have no confirmed cases of COVID-19 among any of our workforce or consumers. We continue to track possible cases and exposures across our services. Wherever there has been a possible case or exposure, we have immediately enacted self-isolation procedures and taken steps to ensure that everyone who could have been in touch with that person has been informed directly, both of the potential exposure and of the negative test results.

We are closely monitoring all government announcements at state and federal level and adjusting our guidance to changing circumstances.

Many thanks for your support and understanding as we navigate through this difficult time.

 

 

 

 

 

Bronwyn Pike
Chief Executive Officer

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