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Sharing the Care

Does someone you care for need residential care?

Sharing the Care is our support kit for families and carers new to residential care.

Designed to help family carers and the person they care for make the transition to residential care a little easier.

Our comprehensive support kit guides you through what to expect and how to cope with this significant life change, from emotional responses and personal wellbeing to settling the resident into their new home. It provides practical advice and easy access to the information and supports you might need during this time of transition.

Sharing the Care

The transition to residential care

Everyone's ageing journey, and their path to residential care, is unique.

Informed by first-hand experience, Sharing the Care was initiated by Uniting AgeWell’s Tasmanian-based social worker Heidi Morton in response to the amount of carer stress she witnessed when the person they care for transitions into residential care.

Part of Uniting AgeWell’s approach to mental health and wellbeing, the kit content was developed through consultation with family carers via a series of focus groups, as well as with residents, staff and health professionals.

“We aim to reassure carers what they are going through is quite normal,” Heidi says. “And that both the carer and the resident need to be okay for you both to be okay.”

Sharing the care Heidi4

How Sharing the Care can help?

Our support kit helps you to navigate:

  • Emotional pressures and compassion fatigue
  • Self-motivation and creating your own support network
  • Who to contact when life is feeling hard
  • Paperwork and sorting things out
  • Getting services at home
  • Ways to support a person with dementia
  • Getting the person you care for settled into their new home
  • Safety concerns
  • Ways to take care of yourself
Sharing the care image2 cropped

How we assist carers, like Alice, at every step

Alice grew up one of fifteen children and quickly learnt how to get on with getting on. But waking up at all hours of the night to care for her 93-year-old husband, Rex, showering and feeding him, and taking him to the toilet took its toll on her. And she helplessly watched as his dementia worsened.

Rex soon moved into Uniting AgeWell Latrobe Community Strathdevon. He’s been happy and content from the get-go, and Alice says the level of care is excellent.

Despite this, she was unprepared for the rollercoaster of emotions she still finds herself on: guilt, relief, happiness, emptiness, sadness … “You name it, I feel it!” she says.

Read Alice's full story
Alice Nichols web

By working together as Partners in Care we can achieve better outcomes for all.

At the heart of our approach to service delivery is effective and respectful communication.

Our team are here to provide support and to help you access resources to communicate your needs or those of the person you are caring for effectively.

Learn more
staff looking at resident
  • Get in touch

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    Phone: 1300 783 435
    Email: [email protected]

  • Locations

    We have offices across metropolitan and regional Victoria and Tasmania.

    Find your local office