What’s involved?
The Community Visitors Scheme is run by the Australian Government to improve the lives of elderly people in nursing homes who are lonely or isolated. A government auspice will match you to an elderly person in aged care from your local area, based on your interests and hobbies. The auspice will also support you if you have any questions about your visits.
In order to be a community visitor, you should be able to commit to visiting your resident at least once a fortnight. During the visits, you can read together, listen to music, play a game, or just sit and chat. With some residents you may be able to go for a walk or take them on outings.
For more information or to volunteer for the Community Visitors Scheme, call the Aged and Community Care Information Line on 1800 500 853 or contact your local Commonwealth Carelink Centre on 1800 052 222.
Why should people do this?
Spending time with someone lonely makes their life better and brighter. What’s surprising is, it makes your life better too – the older generations have amazing stories to tell! Adopt a granny is especially rewarding if you no longer have grandparents of your own, or if your own grandparents live far away. Why not team up with some friends, and adopt grannies from the same aged care home? That way you can encourage each other to keep up the commitment, and swap ideas for fun things that you and your residents can do together.
Contact information
The Government page for the Community Visitors Scheme is www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing-rescare-cvs-cvs.htm
The Community Visitors Scheme homepage is a bit clunky and amateur, but provides an online volunteer application www.communitywebs.org/CopperTriangleVisitors/
You can also access CVS websites for other states/regions including: www.qccn.org.au and www.logancvs.org.au
This work is licenced under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence.
© 2008. First published on actnow.com.au
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