Rebels With A Cause
November 21st, 2019; It was a Thursday afternoon and I was making my usual “cold calls” to residential aged care facilities (RACFs) at the primetime of 1 pm. I made a call to Moran Aged Care and spoke to a lovely receptionist named Amanda. I delivered our Y-Work pitch to discover if they had anyone under the age of 65 living in their facility and if there was anyone they could suggest I speak to regarding this matter. Amanda then informed me that they actually have a specific ward in their facility dedicated to younger residents!
After speaking with the Facility Manager, we organised to travel to Moran Aged Care the following Monday so we could further discuss the Y-Work program and meet potential program participants.
Kim & I drove up together that morning and met with the facility manager to discuss The Y-House Foundation and the revolutionary Daintree Ward. We discovered there are a total of 5 residents under the age of 65 living at Moran Aged Care and the group have aptly adopted the name‘The Rebels’. Our eyes lit up at the prospect of being able to work with a number of young people at one facility. The facility manager suggested we organise a group information session to present Y-Work to all 5 of The Rebels. Kim & I immediately accepted the invitation and began planning our presentation.
February 10th, 2020; After we had all made our introductions and spent some time getting to know each other, we began our Y-Work presentation to the group. It was clearly evident there was eagerness in the room to proceed with this program and when we asked who would like to become a Y-Work Participant, astonishingly, everyone single one of The Rebels said “yes” and wanted to see us again next week. We decided to lock in the next 3 Monday afternoons for group coaching sessions.
February 17th, 2020; The first coaching session was centred around personal core values. The purpose of this approach is to help us and each participant to gain a better understanding of who they are as a person and what is most important to them. Today we took the first steps towards some exciting program outcomes for our new participants.
February 24th, 2020; We decided to use a “divide & conquer” approach for today’s session as we had limited time to do a Factfind Discovery with each participant. I focused on sitting down with each individual to learn about their personal history, whilst Kim worked with each individual to try to surface up employment goals. The most fascinating part of this experience so far is learning how dichotomous everyone’s lives were before being forced into aged care. We are more determined now than ever to create a positive impact for these young people. We will return again next week to continue more Factfind discovery and to begin working on CV prep.
March 2nd, 2020; Our third group coaching session with The Rebels ran much the same as the last. Now that everyone’s Factfind has been completed and Kim has spent some time with each individual uncovering areas of interest for employment, we now have a much clearer understanding of each participant. We will return to Moran Aged Care in another two weeks and we’ll spend some of this lead-time identifying local potential employers.
Little did we know this would be our last aged care visit for a long time…
March 16th, 2020; Due to the recent worsening of the Covid-19 pandemic the Y-Work team has ceased all face-to-face aged care visits. Our staff will work from home and remain connected with our participants in aged care via virtual means.
