Invaluable research on vulnerable people services post quake to be announced

Invaluable research findings on what services supporting vulnerable people have learned from the September and February earthquakes will be announced on Monday (August 1, 2011).

Stella Ward, Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) executive director of Allied Health, says the Canterbury earthquakes have impacted on all sectors of our city but services supporting older and vulnerable people found themselves in a situation where they had to keep ‘soldiering on’ regardless of if they had suffered personal and/or material loss.

“The continuation of their services, home support, retirement villages and aged residential care was often not negotiable. They had people depending on them.”

Eldernet team members discovered that providers of these services outside of the Canterbury region wanted to know how they could best prepare themselves should the same happen to them.

Esther Perriam, Operations Manager of Eldernet and Care Publications, says it was from this experience the seeds for ‘what we have learned’ were sown.

Eldernet approached the CDHB for funding assistance for Dr Sue Carswell to conduct and compile the research, she says.

“We then invited all providers of these services to contribute the lessons they had learnt and the things they would like to pass on to other services,” Esther says.

Stella says the research findings focus on what providers of these services wish to pass on to other services outside of Canterbury.

“Some of the lessons are practical and others are more philosophical – but they are all messages the owners, managers and workers who lived through the earthquakes want to pass on,” Stella says.

The research will be presented at a meeting at Spreydon Baptist Church auditorium on Monday, August 1, 2011 at 1.00pm.

SPEAKERS at the launch include:
• Dr Sue Carswell, Principal Researcher
• Esther Perriam, Eldernet
• Toni Gutschlag/Stella Ward, Canterbury District Health Board
• Michelle Mitchell – Social Rebuild Manager, Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority

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