Charitable grants help take aged care training to the next level

Leading aged care in-home support service, Enliven, has invested around $55,000 in specialised training equipment and established a new training base in Hamilton – significantly lifting the standard of training available to its NZQA-qualified support workers in Auckland and Hamilton.

In a groundbreaking agreement, Enliven will share its new training equipment with Visionwest Waka Whakakitenga in Rotorua, expanding access to high-quality training resources for both services, and will share Visionwest’s training room in Tauranga.

Made possible through charitable grants and supportive suppliers, the training equipment includes hospital beds, full-body hoists, slide transfer sheets, mesh-padded leg slings, power-lift sit-to-stand mobile hoists, and patient-handling manikins. This enables hands-on training in safe moving and handling, complex care techniques and advanced in-home support skills.

“This is an investment in quality and dignity that has been made possible by charitable grant funding and suppliers who want to make a difference and believe in what we are trying to achieve,” says Enliven GM Wendy Hoskin.

“Our new equipment and training rooms will help to better prepare our support workers for the changing realities of in-home care. 

“Increasingly, older people want to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. That includes people with complex needs, multiple health conditions, mobility challenges, and those choosing to receive end-of-life care at home. This shift demands higher-level skills, deeper clinical understanding and greater sensitivity from our support workforce.

“Our new training rooms and equipment will help us meet those needs and raise the bar for in-home care,” she says.

“More than 3300 Enliven clients receiving care at home are expected to directly benefit from the enhanced training capability we can now provide for our support workers.

“Strengthening our support workforce capability also creates a clear pathway for ongoing professional development and helps attract new talent into the aged care sector, future-proofing essential home and community services for the years ahead,” says Hoskin.

Enliven is grateful to the Freemasons Foundation, the Snowden-Watts Charitable Trust (administered by Perpetual Guardian), and the Pageo Charitable Trust for supporting the purchase of specialised training equipment in Auckland; to the Peter and David Picot Charitable Trust for the Rotorua training equipment; to the Glenice and John Gallagher Foundation for funding the Hamilton training equipment; and to the St Joans Trust (administered by Perpetual Guardian) for contributing to equipment in Hamilton and Rotorua.