Real home care clients and the staff who care for them have starred in a new campaign for home care provider HammondCare, in an effort to show what quality care looks like.
HammondCare at Home clients Olga Citroni, 81, of Cabramatta West, and Robyn Vickers, 74, of Hammondville, star in the video and digital campaign that showcases the wide variety of skillsets and professions engaged in delivering their care.
Home aged care is growing rapidly in Australia with more than a million older Australians receiving some form of home care support. The campaign was conceived in-house by the HammondCare marketing team, with production support from Macquarie Park-based agency Cadence.
The HammondCare At Home Team You campaign highlights the large group of people behind the comprehensive aged care provided to support people like Olga and Robyn.
Citroni, who is scripted as the character “Sue”, was thrilled to be part of the excitement of having about 20 people bustling about her home of 43 years, one day in April.
“I’ve never been involved in anything like this before,” she said. “I am lucky as I have a great team of people from HammondCare At Home to help me, as well as my family and friends,” she said.
Citroni’s Level 2 Home Care Package supports her to continue living at home following knee and hip replacements and beating cancer twice, most recently as 2014.
There for the shoot was a specialised carer, a registered nurse, a case manager, allied health workers, a pastoral care worker, an additional specialised carer to assist with shopping and a gardening volunteer.
Fresia Martinez, also in the video, comes to Citroni’s home twice a week, to help with cleaning as well as shopping and transport to medical appointments. Fresia said: “It was fun to do. It’s great to be able to show how we all at HammondCare At Home do our part.”
Others involved included registered nurse Elizabeth Crisologo, who has been regularly dropping by Citroni’s home to help with dressings from a recent fall.
Born in Argentina, Citronimoved to Australia to marry husband John. Sadly, John passed away after 25 years of marriage in 2016. Together Citroniand John have three children and seven grandchildren.
In Vickers’s case, she is at the centre of a photo shoot with seven HammondCare at Home staff at her Hammondville independent living unit where she lives with her cavoodle Penny.
Vickers lives with an auto-immune condition, and she admits she needs HammondCare At Home to make things easier. She lives on her own after her husband died in 2019. She has two children and 3 grandchildren.
“I am grateful for the people that can come to my home to help,” she said.
One of Vickers’s team is Lauren Hansell, an exercise physiologist who has provided her with skills like strength, balance and falls prevention.
“It’s fulfilling to be able to give people like Robyn the support they need to live as independently as possible,” Lauren said.
HammondCare At Home general manager Bay Warburton said the Team You concept highlights that home care requires a full team approach to deliver the care that clients are seeking and skills such as personal care plus pastoral care, allied health and clinical expertise that support almost every part of life.
“We are very conscious that we are delivering holistic care in the place that is very special, someone’s home,” Warburton said.
“At HammondCare At Home, we want to deliver home care, which looks at each client as a whole person, taking into account their needs and personality, with our care shaped to reflect those needs,” he said.