enliven at City of Greater Dandenong

enliven is a health promoting charity and primary care partnership. Lead agency enliven brought together an alliance of local area health and human services to improve care of older people in the community.

The project created meaningful partnerships across the agencies, and engaged with older people who were not currently accessing services.

In March 2017, local agencies participated in a workshop to identify ways of trialling engagement and re-engagement activities for seniors.

This led to the following initiatives:

a survey of South Eastern Legacy clients in Greater Dandenong to inform future offerings by that organisation
a partnership between the Dandenong Neighbourhood House and the City of Greater Dandenong Library (Dandenong branch) to establish a homework club where seniors mentored year 6–12 students and facilitated peer to peer support
a robotics class for older adults using EV3 LEGO robotics kits who had little or no computer skills to build confidence in using computers (held at the Library as a partnership between Dandenong Library and Dandenong Neighbourhood house)
a review of technology needs, and the development of a digital literacy class, which pioneered an innovative teaching format (run through Dandenong Neighbourhood House).
Key lessons included:
primary care partnerships are well connected facilitators to tackle isolation and loneliness in older people
enliven acted as a conduit between organisations to expand opportunities to engage seniors in activities and initiatives
bringing different community groups together resulted in meaningful and sustainable partnerships and unexpected outcomes
engaging seniors to support and mentor youth and their learning (ie.the homework club) invigorated and energised older people
trialling different approaches to engage and support seniors in technology is crucial. Further research on this approach would be valuable
the robotics class improved participants’ confidence to explore other digital technologies, such as mobile phone and computers.
common interests bring people together regardless of where they live, even if beyond municipal boundaries

Project Leadership Group

Bill Rogers,Welfare Officer, South Eastern Legacy
Ali Aziz, Assistant Manager, Dandenong Neighbourhood House
Lynn McLauchlan, Manager Aged and Community Care, Monash Health
Katie Goodrope, Regional HACC Diversity Advisor Southern Region
Jayne Kierce, Access and Quality Co-ordinator, City of Greater Dandenong
Koula Kalaitzoglou, Library Programs Project Development Officer ,City of Greater Dandenong Library
Michelle Thompson,Community Programs Co-ordinator, Uniting Age Well
Kerry Rendell, Healthy Ageing Program Manager, Bolton Clarke
Karen Atley, Assistant Manage ,Bolton Clarke
Rob Macindoe, Executive Officer, enliven

Project contact

Helen Cocks

Project Manager

enliven

Phone: 03 9791 1768

Email: helen@enliven.org.au

Resources

www.enliven.org.au