Our self-management and person-centred practices positively influenced how we responded to everyone’s wellbeing over the time we all had to stay at home.  We were able to rapidly pull together a cross organisation team to focus on health and safety issues relating to Covid-19.  Having the perspectives of team members from a variety of roles resulted in effective planning, ensuring that we addressed all issues as we went through the alert levels.  Having one-page profiles for everyone in the organisation meant we knew what was important to each person and how best to support each other.

Our teams have built up effective ways of working together and they quickly rallied together, to check in with people and families to work out just enough support for people to feel safe and supported while at home during this time.   Because various forms of virtual support took place over this time team members reported that they were spending a lot of time talking with people and families and relationships deepened.

We set up a “Options at Home” Facebook group that was open to everyone connected to Options, including families, friends and this continues to provide a space for sharing stories and opportunities for connecting. With a grant from MSD we set up a chrome book library and enabled people to connect with family and friends. We also offered a variety of activities over zoom-connecting people with similar passions and interests, including relaxation groups, “Bloke’s Chat” , coffee group and goal planning workshops (GROW) to assist people to self-create steps to achieve their goal, making the most of peer support and their own resources. 

Over the past month we have been gathering with people to share stories about what we did differently, what we learnt and what new things we want to keep doing, including how Options offers support to people.  We will have our findings ready in August to share and figure out our next steps.