Welcome Summer

Sunday 27 September

Afternoon tea with families

of our residents in Kauri

and Karaka wings to be

held in the Karaka Dining

room between 2pm & 3pm.

Entertainment will also be

provided.

Annual Ball—Where in

the World am I from? Planning has commenced

for the Ball to be held on 6

November 2009 at 6pm.

Invitations will be sent out

to family members closer to

the date. This year our

theme is a celebration of

the wonderful cultural di-

versity evident in our Knox

community—residents and

staff. Attendees are invited

to wear something which

represents the nationality

and culture they identify

with, I am sure this will

give us plenty of scope for

fun.

01 I S S U E

S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9

Newsletter

Many of you will also be aware that Elizabeth

Knox Home and Hospital has also embarked on

the “Eden Alternative” journey,

The Eden Alternative is based on the core be-

lief that ageing

should be a contin-

ued stage of devel-

o p m e n t a n d

growth, rather than

a period of decline.

Founded in 1991 by

Dr William Thomas,

a Harvard educated

Physician and

Geriatrician, the Eden Alternative has trained

over 17,000 Eden Associates and now has over

300 registered homes in USA, Canada, Europe

and Australia.

The staff and management of these homes

continue to work toward meaningful culture

change through training and dedication to cre-

ating a life worth living for those in their care .

Registration requires commitment to building

human habitats for residents and staff, ongoing

organizational growth and evidence of signifi-

cant culture change through education and

EKHH is preparing for registration as an

“Edeniz ing

“facility. At

the core of

the Eden

Alternative

is the very

simple belief

that care be

provided in

a habitat for

human beings not a sterile medical institution.

These habitats have an ongoing commitment to

eliminating the plagues of loneliness, helpless-

ness and boredom that make life intolerable in

many care facilities. The Eden Alternative

shows how companionship, the opportunity to

give meaningful care to other living things and

variety and spontaneity are the ways this is

achieved. Elizabeth Knox

Elizabeth Knox 523 3119 www.knox.co.nz

Welcome to our first newsletter—we will be producing

these regularly to keep you up-to-date with the Knox

news. This year has seen a great deal of activity on the

quality front, with our Certification (mandatory) and

Accreditation (voluntary) audits in May, with notification

in August that we had achieved the accreditation for the

maximum period of three years. We are one of only

four long term care facilities in Auckland to have

achieved QHNZ Accreditation.

Accreditation is the voluntary, structured process of organizational performance assessment to

encourage continual quality improvement. The standards cover all aspects of client care and ser-

vice as well as all organizational systems that support the provision of care and support and asses-

sors are qualified and experienced health professionals and managers.

The Eden Alternative

Eden Update Sessions

Information sessions for

family and friends around

the Eden Alternative are

being planned, the first of

which will be on Wednes-

day 7 October at 1.30pm.

More dates and times to

follow including evening

sessions.

Accreditation

Celebration We are also planning a

celebration of the achieve-

ment of accreditation. The

date is not yet confirmed

as we are hoping to have

a dignitary in attendance.

Residents Garden Opening On Thursday 1 October at 2pm we will be officially opening the Residents Garden. Light refreshment will be provided. Our Residents have been busy tending the garden since its upgrade earlier this year. If you would like to attend, please call our number below and let us know.

has made a commitment to the “journey”

and since I did my Associate training in

March we have followed with two in-house

training programmes being provided, one in

July and one last week. Training is provided

by Eden in Oz&NZ trainers. In total we have

trained 61 team members across all disci-

plines. We are delighted that Board members

are participating in training, ensuring that

culture change will be sustainable and well

supported.

Residents participation in change is essential,

and for some months we have held weekly

resident meetings. These sessions are direct-

ing our focus in respect of quality and Eden

initiatives, enabling very useful and timely

feedback on how we are doing.

Jill Woodward

CEO

Elizabeth Knox 523 3119 www.knox.co.nz

Introducing Our Board Members

Mr Warwick Peacock—Chairman Dr Alistair MacCormick Mr Andrew Smith Mrs Christine Hart Mr Geoff Wales Dr Ross McCormick Mr Malcolm Crotty Dr Bruce Foggo

Our board meets on a monthly basis.

Redevelopment Considerable progress has been made in the past 12 months toward a long term redevelopment plan. This commenced with the development of a Strategic Plan, site utilization review and the exploration of suitable building options. Currently costing work is being undertaken for refurbish-ment of some existing areas and the construction of new resident areas, attached to the existing

Residents Committee Several months ago a Resident’s Committee was established, This has representation of 6 Residents and provides a superb vehicle to increase residents participation in decision-making.

Elizabeth Knox 523 3119 www.knox.co.nz

We are thrilled to have settled three new members of our com-munity—Evie and Coco are our cats and Gemma our dog is a greyhound. All three have “care-plans” and have been screened and managed according to the guidelines established by our Eden colleagues. This is essential to ensure they are appropriate to our habitat and are well cared for.

Coco

Gemma

Evie

From our Activities Programme

August/September

Eden As a development of our Eden training, Physio/OT have introduced a self help morning tea to encourage independence. Staff continue to provide assistance as required. Community Involvement We have welcomed and enjoyed the assistance of 4 girls from Baradene College these last two months. They join us as part of their Social Development each Wednesday for 2 hours to assist in the OT Department. St Cuthberts girls also come each week to help with the Physio Exercise Circuit. The Residents really enjoy the interaction. Intrepid Journey OT took the members of our Garden Group to Kings Plant Barn in Orakei. 6 residents and 4 staff enjoyed the morning buying plants and sampling some of their delicious coffee & cake! Glorious spring day added to the success of this outing. Celebration Mary Aitkenhead from Kauri celebrated her 100th birthday on 29 August 2009. Her family held a party in Totara where they and EKH friends had a wonderful time. Warren, a regular visiting entertainer made an appearance and sang Mary some of her favourite songs. Themed Days Over the year we have celebrated a number of local and internationally recognised days. This involves lots of dressing up by residents and staff and the days are enjoyed by all. The days celebrated have included:

Kiwiana Day

Bastille Day

Queens Birthday Britomart Visit

2 staff took residents from Kowhai to Britomart to see and ride in the trains. The train adventure was most suc-cessful and we plan to go again.

Tai Chi and Seated Dancing

We have been running our Tai Chi and Seated Dancing programmes for a num-ber of months now and both are enjoyed by our residents and staff.

Seated Dancing

Elizabeth Knox 523 3119 www.knox.co.nz

Our website is constantly being improved, extended and updated. To learn more about us, the services we provide, view up coming events and activities, view photo’s of recent events or check current job vacancies go to: www.knox.co.nz

We have a small number of volunteers here lead by our Volunteer Co-ordinator Bev de Vink. Their contribution to our services is invaluable to our residents and staff and we thank them all for their generosity. We are keen to expand our great volunteer team and would welcome your support. Can you spare a few hours per week? Please phone: 09 520 8446

Bev de Vink Volunteer Coordinator

It would be very helpful if you could take the time to complete the attached infor-mation sheet as we would like to ensure we have the correct contact details for family and friends of resi-dents. We would also like to be able to email you this newsletter and other infor-mation. Currently email ad-dresses are not collected. We would like to assure you that your email information will not be provided to any other party and will only be used by us to send informa-tion to you. Should you, at any time, not want to re-ceive this information, let us know and we will remove your email details. Please return your com-pleted form in the envelope provided.