News

To families, whānau and friends,

As you will be aware, we have moved to COVID-19 Alert Level 3 in Auckland and Alert Level 2 throughout the rest of the country.

Firstly, for those of you who have family members and friends in our disability services, including IDEA Services and Choices NZ, I know that local managers will be contacting you to talk through the current situation and will keep you updated. This is an incredibly busy time for us so if we haven’t reached you yet – please feel free to call us.

We know this is a worrying time and I want to reassure you that we are moving quickly to reduce the risk to the people we support and staff.

This means that we are again following best advice, Government guidelines and best practice and are reactivating processes and ways of working that were effective when we were previously at those levels.

We hope that the following responses are only required for a short time. However, we will monitor Government advice and keep you updated.

Disability Services including IDEA Services and Choices NZ

The message for everyone in Auckland is go home and stay home if you can and we will be working hard to keep bubbles as small as possible.

We will not be allowing visitors to our services in Auckland except on compassionate grounds. This is in line with advice to the Aged Care Sector. Please feel free to talk to our local staff who can support you to apply for approval through a Regional Manager to be able to visit.

We know that this is hard for people and we hope it will be temporary. We will be talking with the people we support about this and we will support people to be connected via phono or online through tools such as WhatsApp. We know this doesn’t work for everyone and if it doesn’t work for you and you want to connect with a person in our services urgently please talk to us.

We will continue to support those people who live in our residential services to get out and about locally for fresh air and recreation but not to attend services where people gather – this is the same advice for all Aucklanders.

Some people who live with family or other providers have been attending our day bases for some services. This will be suspended while the ‘go home stay home’ instruction for Auckland remains in place. We hope to know more at the end of this week.

Alert Level 2, the rest of New Zealand for IDEA Services and Choices NZ

We remain vigilant.

We will continue to welcome visitors in line with our visitor protocols, maintain contact tracing and support people to attend activities where small groups gather in line with Government advice for Level 2.

Accessible Properties

Our tenancy and property managers in Accessible Properties will be continuing some essential services. Please see their website here for more information.

IHC

We will be supporting many of our staff in Auckland to work remotely but people will still be available by email or phone.

Face-to-face fundraising has been suspended in the Auckland region and will continue elsewhere with the use of PPE.

Wecare.kiwi and Awhi-at-home are both continuing to operate so that families and individuals throughout New Zealand have access to support, connection and information.

We look forward to keeping you updated.

Please stay safe.

Ralph Jones
IHC Group Chief Executive