Last month we held a Community Forum and welcomed more than 50 local health practitioners to our Centre to find out more about what we do and how we can help their patients.

We invited a local GP Dr Sabrina Saldanha and Stewart James GM Hammond Care to talk about their experience of the value of integrated community and aged care. We also heard from three people who have used the services of Sydney Community Services. Their words were very moving as they spoke about the difficulties faced by carers and seniors in the community. Linda Chen told us about how she had been helped when she lost her sight ten years ago. Linda spoke no English when she started English classes.

Linda said, ”I have been a client with the Hunters Hill Community Centre of Sydney Community Services (SCS) since I lost my vision ten years ago.

SCS provides volunteer visitors who support me in learning and improving my English, and to develop my computer skills.

Every Friday afternoon I meet my friends in the English group at the community common room. This group is organised by Tina at SCS.

Language is an important tool for me to connect with other people in the community. I feel that learning English is very important.

The computer is another important tool. It brings the whole world to me, even though I am vision impaired. I have learnt how to send and receive emails, research information using Google, listen to audio books, music and news almost every day. By scanning documents I can read anything.”

Linda’s whole speech was about three minutes. She had written it and learnt it by heart. We were all very moved and she received a huge round of applause at the end.

The aim of the evening was to ensure that the local Lane Cove and Hunters Hill health professionals were fully aware of the support services for seniors and people with a disability that we provide. It was also a great networking event for everyone and we will be making it a regular event. It keeps the local health professionals up to date with us and each other and it means we can find out from them what they need from us to help them care for their patients.