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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-04-09 Daily Xml
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HOUSING SA

Ms THOMPSON (Reynell) (14:19): My question is to the Minister for Housing. What assistance has Housing SA been providing to older public housing tenants to assist them to live independently for as long as possible?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Families and Communities, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Housing, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Disability, Minister Assisting the Premier in Cabinet Business and Public Sector Management) (14:20): I thank the member for her question, and I acknowledge her strong advocacy on behalf of older South Australians, especially in her electorate of Reynell. Housing SA embarked on a one-off initiative in late 2006 that was aimed at supporting elderly tenants to remain in their homes. The program, the Aged Support Initiative, has been supported through the role of several community care consultants who have been trained in mentoring regional Housing SA service delivery staff in order that they can better advise older tenants of the services available to them so that they can live independently for as long as possible.

The care consultants have assisted Housing SA to identify all relevant services that our tenants can access and have had a focus on finding a range of community and voluntary activities in which senior tenants can become involved. Critically, they have also developed relationships between a range of other service providers in government agencies, including the Office for the Ageing, so that long-term collaboration can occur. This has been an incredibly successful program, which has achieved all its objectives, including skilling up all our staff to make sure that they provide even better services for seniors in public housing.

Resource kits containing information on support services for older people are being used in each regional Housing SA office, and the resources include electronic databases and up-to-date information on services for seniors. We are also exploring other options to keep all our service staff up to speed, including regular training sessions for the Department for Families and Communities' College for Learning and Development. That is because, at its heart, it is about ensuring that Housing SA services staff have a thorough understanding of the challenges for older tenants to make sure that the services we provide to them are as good as they can possibly be.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the nine staff of the Aged Support Initiative, who have done an excellent job in ensuring that a strong focus on the needs of our older tenants is part of our core business, and I am confident that the skills that our staff have developed through this initiative will benefit older Housing SA tenants well into the future.

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