COVID-19 and your Home Care Services

At Australian Unity, our biggest priority is the health, safety and wellbeing of our customers and our people who care for them. That's why we're committed to supporting you throughout the COVID-19 health crisis.

Quality controls to protect our people and customers

While the situation with COVID-19 is developing rapidly and changing daily, please rest assured that we're actively monitoring and acting on all appropriate advice from government and health authorities, supported by our own Chief Medical Advisor.

Australian Unity has moved quickly to put strong processes in place aimed at preventing cases of COVID-19 that may occur within our workforce from affecting our customers. We are actively identifying, assessing and managing risks relating to our services to try to reduce transmission of the virus.

We're confident our customers can continue to safely use our services during these challenging times. We are making sure our frontline employees (in particular, our care workers and community nurses) are trained, equipped and capable of doing what's needed to:

• Prevent the spread of respiratory diseases, including COVID-19, within the community,
• Ensure compliance with government health regulations and social distancing directives, and
• Amplify existing infection prevention and control procedures and how they apply to COVID-19.

All Australian Unity frontline employees will require COVID-19 vaccinations to perform their roles from 31 December 2021

At Australian Unity we strongly believe that vaccination against COVID-19 is the best way to protect our vulnerable customers and our people who care for and support them.

That’s why we have made the significant decision to make vaccinations a condition of employment for all frontline employees as of 31 December 2021.

This health and safety initiative expands on government vaccination requirements that already apply to residential aged care workforce and NSW-based disability workers in local government areas of concern.

As a company committed to the wellbeing of all our employees, customers and the broader community, we believe that having a fully vaccinated workforce is the right thing to do. View more information.

Five protection principles we’re using day-to-day

Our care workers are following five protection principles to ensure that services can be delivered as safely as possible. We are urging customers to follow these principles too.

• Stay home if you’re unwell and notify your branch
• Answer the pre-service screening questions accurately ahead of each visit
• Apply social distancing, wherever possible
• Your care worker will wear PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), including a mask. We ask that you wear a mask too
• Practise good infection control by washing your hands regularly with soap and water

For new customers, we’re adapting our on-boarding procedures based on COVID-19 risk in the local area to ensure a COVID-safe sign-up experience. In locations where risk is rising or high we’ll minimise face to face contact as we complete wellbeing plans, safety checks and on-boarding documentation and ensure our team members wear appropriate PPE aimed at keeping customers and their loved ones safe.

The importance of the pre-screening questions

Ahead of each service visit, our home care team will ask a series of questions to determine whether it’s safe to go ahead with the service. The questions include:

• Are you experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms?
• Are you, or someone you live with, isolating because of COVID-19?
• Are you, or someone you live with, awaiting COVID-19 test results?
• Have you, or someone you live with, travelled to a known COVID-19 exposure site or hotspot in the last 14 days?
• Have you, or someone you live with, knowingly breached public health orders or local restrictions?

It’s incredibly important that customers answer these questions accurately ahead of each visit, noting any details that may have changed since our last visit.