Avonlea Rest Home - Dementia Care NZ

Havening - August 2022.

Havening is sometimes known as ‘first aid for the emotions’ for its ability to very quickly soothe and down-regulate stress neuro-chemistry and promote calm and tranquility. 
Havening is a psycho-sensory therapy that helps people identify the root causes of their issues and rewire their response so that they can release issues like stress, trauma and anxiety.
Over the past 18 months I’ve completed Havening training including a three-day intensive training programme, passing 30 written client case studies, two client case study videos, ethics and a neuro-science exam.
The objective of this training is to explore how Havening techniques might help people living with dementia. Over the next few months we will be considering how simple Havening techniques could  help de-escalate situations our residents find distressing or confronting, and create a sense of safety and calm in our homes.
How it works
Havening is based on neuro-science and is all about training the brain to respond differently to particular issues. People’s brains can become stuck in a pattern of high alert around certain circumstances and situations. These situations will trigger extreme or disproportional responses.
Havening techniques can interrupt this pattern by creating healing delta waves. It is gentle, healing, effective and often rapid, and has no negative side effects.
In a session we use Havening Touch to create the change. This technique switches off the brain’s ‘alarm’ button associated with a particular stored trauma, preventing future unhelpful responses. Havening is simple, safe and highly effective, gently down-regulating anxiety and distress and creating a sense of safety … a sense of a safe ‘Haven’.
Donya Nee, Promotions and Public Relations Coordinator and Havening practitioner.

Strengthening our clinical team - August 2022.

We are delighted to have recently secured the services of two highly skilled and experienced clinicians to join our organisational team in key leadership roles.
Urmee Rahman and Arrah Bagtang have accepted positions as Regional Clinical Managers with Dementia Care NZ. Their role will be to mentor, guide and support the Clinical Managers of our rest homes, and through them the Registered Nursing and care teams. 
Based in the South and North Islands respectively, they will provide leadership through regular on-site visits, zoom sessions and telephone support. They in turn will be supported by our wider DCNZ team. 
In welcoming Urmee and Arrah to our family, we would like to take this opportunity to introduce them to you.
A dedicated professional with over 8 years of clinical and managerial experience in the health sector, Urmee’s expertise is in aged care nursing, with the past four years in clinical management roles.
Urmee’s approach is strongly people-focused, with a commitment to empowering and supporting our older population to continue to be in charge of living their lives in the way that makes them happy.
Urmee is at home working within a multi-disciplinary team setting to provide the highest quality of care at all times. She thrives on leading and developing successful teams, and implementing change in a dynamic and complex healthcare environment.
Her personal interests include reading, travelling, and exploring and getting to know different cultures and places.
Arrah comes to us with more than seven years experience as Clinical Manager for Aged Care facilities providing rest home, hospital and dementia levels of care, with proven ability to support both residents and staff. Her most recent role has been as Clinical Manager of a 60-bed rest home providing hospital and rest home level care. 
Arrah has expertise in Infection Control, Health and Safety, Quality Improvement, facilitating staff education, interRAI assessments and all aspects of clinical team leadership. Her focus is on creating and maintaining warm, caring and effective relationships with residents, their families and the staff team to provide truly excellent holistic care.
Above all, Arrah’s passion for older persons’ care, and especially dementia, shine through the work she has chosen to do.
This dual appointment broadens and strengthens the clinical expertise of our team, making an additional level of knowledge, skills and experience readily accessible to staff, residents and families. The added benefits in terms of care will be significant, with a true passion for dementia and aged care characterising each member of our outstanding clinical team.

June 22 2022

WELCOMING BREZEL BANALAGAY, OUR NEW OPERATIONS MANAGER

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Brezel Banalagay as our new Operations  Manager here at Avonlea Dementia Care. Brezel will be joining us on 28 June. 
We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to Daphne for her wonderful work in supporting Armie and our staff team, and are happy to let you know that she will be remaining with us in a hands-on caregiving role on a casual basis, while pursuing her nursing studies full time.
A Bachelor of Science degree in Management Accounting from the Philippines has been Brezel’s foundation for administrative and healthcare support roles in the Middle East and New Zealand, with eight years in NZ healthcare specialising in brain injury rehabilitation, intellectual disabililty and mental health.
Working across a number of different sectors has broadened her ability, skills and values, and Brezel is always eager to learn things that will help her grow in every field. She sees the vision, values and philosophy of our organisation is a stronghold in achieving success and building great working relationships. 
Brezel believes "one person caring for another represent life's greatest values more than any accomplishments in this world."
We join in congratulating Brezel on her appointment and wish her the very best as she takes on this key role. 
22/06/22

May 2022 - Our brand new purpose built dementia care home is open!

We are excited to announce the opening of our brand new, purpose built dementia care home at Avonlea. We are now welcoming new residents and are inviting viewings from interested residents and family members. 

Pyaar home (which means ‘love’ in Hindi), is a spacious yet homely ten bedroom home adjoining an existing home on the Avonlea site. It is modern, bright and warm with lovely new landscaped gardens, lawn and a spacious courtyard area with a shade sail. There are lovely garden paths to explore and a large raised garden bed for flowers and our own vegetables and herbs for our creative cooking group. There is air conditioning and heating to keep everyone comfortable no matter what the weather decides to do.

The design is in keeping with our trademark ‘small homes’ concept yet exceptionally spacious. There is a lovely open plan kitchen for residents and families to enjoy and separate quiet areas to rest and relax, or spend private time together when families come to visit. There is a bright and sunny second lounge overlooking the lawn and flower gardens.

The bedrooms are spacious and the ensuites generous. 8 of the 10 bedrooms have an ensuite and there are also communal bathrooms available.

Pyaar’s main entrance is from Taramea Place, the first street on the left after the main Avonlea entrance on Lincoln Road. This is essentially our ‘front door’ now and where you will find our managers Daphne and Armie ready to welcome you. The home is also accessible from within Avonlea in keeping with our style of interconnecting homes which bring a lovely sense of community for our residents. We often take groups of friends to ‘visit the neighbor’s and it is lovely to do so via the winding garden paths that are beautifully planted out.

We warmly invite you to come and visit Pyaar Home, Avonlea at any time. Come for a cuppa and a walk through if you are in the area, or ring to make a time. Daphne and Armie will be delighted to welcome you.

March 21 2020

IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING COVID-19 AND VISITATION.

We have decided to temporarily close our home over the weekend to visitors as we work towards implementing the latest advice from the Ministry of Health as of 21st March 2020. We are reviewing our processes to ensure they meet the new recommendations from the Ministry. We will advise you of the new process for visiting our home on Monday, 23rd March 2020.

We acknowledge the importance of visits for our residents and their loved ones. Closing our doors is not a step we take lightly. However, preventing the spread of COVID-19 has to take priority.

Andrew Sheard
Director

March 2018:

Easter is a special celebration for us here in our home. We love to enjoy loving time together and share memories evoked by the scent of fresh hot cross buns and the feeling of anticipation as we unwrap the first Easter egg.

We wish you all a safe and happy Easter with those you love.

As always, we welcome your visits and remind you that our visiting times are the same throughout the holidays.

March 2018:

January 2018:

Christmas is a time when treasured family and social traditions are renewed and enjoyed by us all. Christmas card writing is an time-honoured tradition that seems to be dying out as email communication becomes more popular. At Avonlea we have loved helping each other to write Christmas cards to family and friends. There’s nothing quite as special as receiving a card in the handwriting of a person you love.

December 2017:

To our dear friends
It's the end of 2017, a time of reflection on the past year. As always, there have been many moments of joy, laughter, peace and wonder: what we call ‘magic moments’. We are full of gratitude and would like to say thank you to you all. Thank you for encouraging us by being part of this online community. Thank you to the people who visit our homes - it is always lovely to see you. Most of all a very big thank you to those of you who share your family membe...r or friend with us. It is a huge privilege to take care of the people who live here with us in their home. They are a wonderful inspiration to us and we love them dearly.
We would also like to say an enormous thank you to each and every member of our staff team. We appreciate you and value you so much. Thank you for everything you do.
We are grateful for the highs and lows, the challenges and opportunities this past year has brought. Thank you for being part of it.

October 2017:

Recently at Avonlea we had a “Pink Day”. This was not only to acknowledge breast cancer awareness but also just to have some extra fun together. Residents and staff dressed in pink and purple and we decorated the home with pink balloons, used pink serviettes and enjoyed pink Lamingtons. Our Diversional Therapist Jo enjoyed making some amazing enormous pink flowers with residents to decorate our spring-themed rooms. Even nature joined in with a stunning display of pink blossom on our flowering cherry tree!

October:

At Avonlea we have a lovely new raised planter in the garden. During winter we planted Bokchoy and through the cold winter months we enjoyed watching it grow and flourish. Recently it was ready to pick and with much anticipation we made stir fry to share. Things always taste better out of your own garden made together with love!

August 2017:

All of us were absolutely delighted with a visit from Rosie a pet lamb for the day. Hugs and shared stories of youth followed. Many residents enjoyed helping with the 2 hourly bottle feeding! Rosie was wearing a nappy which brought much laughter from everyone

August 2017:

Recently we got together on a winters afternoon to make pine cone bird feeders. This was a lovely opportunity to chat and reminisce about what our gardens were like at home and our favorite types of birds. There’s nothing lovelier to welcome in Spring than birdsong in our garden.

 Spring at Avonlea - October 2016

Welcome to Spring at Avonlea. Its so nice to see all the blossom trees in flower and enjoying the spring flowers even though the weather has been unpredictable at times. We are busy enjoying our spring activities and recently we took several van loads out to Hadstock’s farm to pick daffodils. Residents had a lot of fun and brought back many buckets of daffodils to share with everyone else, all the units looked colourful and smelt wonderful for several days.

Our Activities team has been busy with several ongoing projects. In Mahal we have enjoyed making a little area with a wheelbarrow garden, bridge and gnomes for residents to enjoy looking at.

We have a “Mens Club” up and running with activities aimed at things our men like to do, example are painting, gardening, separate van outings, walking club and arts and crafts more aimed at men, we always welcome your suggestions.

We have continued to expand our exercise programme with the help of our physio therapist and encourage residents to engage in “moving” even if sitting in a chair and have fun at the same time. Please feel free to join in if you are visiting at the time.

In the last couple of weeks we have worked along residents, families and staff to turn one of our rooms in Ofa into a ‘Memory Room”.  This special room has items from the 50s and 60s for all of us to enjoy and reminisce. We thank everyone who has denoted items to help bring this room to life. We encourage all families from any unit to take your loved on to the room and enjoy a cuppa and share memories together, just ask staff if you require any help.

Charisma and Sue.

July 2016

We love creative activities at Avonlea. A recent favorite winter activity has been painting and decorating pine cones. These are then used as a tactile resource and placed inside 'fiddle baskets' for our residents in the dementia hospital. Our residents loved contributing and helping with this project.

LATEST AUDIT RESULTS: 16/09/2013

It's official! Avonlea has yet again obtained four year certification from the ministry of health. This is the highest achievable level of certification. CONGRATULATIONS AVONLEA!

Avonlea’s first bake-off for 2013 has just officially ended – and what a day it’s been!

For the past couple of hours our six small homes have been alive with excitement, concentration, engagement and smells as teams of care staff, assisted by family members and residents, vied for the honour of first place.

Our cook Rowena performed the judging based on presentation, texture and lastly taste, with the grand winner being Cherry Lu with her divine tiramisu . Runner up were Sammy and Anita with their exquisite and unique vegetarian cake!

What an exciting event! Now our residents get to make the final judgement when they enjoy the cakes for Coffee Club tomorrow. What a superb effort by all. Many thanks to our families and residents who helped with recipes, tips and ideas.

Cherry’s winning tiramisu recipe will be up on Facebook for all to share soon!

So, Dementia Care NZ teams, who’s having the next bake-off?