Our Response to COVID-19

Monitoring 

As government advice about COVID continues to be updated daily, it’s vital that we all continue closely monitoring the circumstances and what they mean for our participants, ourselves and our loved ones.

We continue to follow the directives of NSW Health to protect our people and participants.

COVID-19 remains a concern for us all and it is as important as ever to adhere to strict hygiene and social distancing measures.

We appreciate your continued support and understanding during these challenging times.

Our people are our priority

We continue to monitor circumstances to ensure we get the balance right between safeguarding our people from the virus and supporting their overall wellbeing.

As restrictions continue easing, we are working hard to ensure our participants are able to engage in their regular activities as much as possible. To support this, we are re-commencing transport and community access to Community Solutions participants for the first time in over six months. Measures have been put in place to ensure we do this as safely as possible for our participants and employees. Enabling social connection is a vital part of supporting our participants’ wellbeing.

Protocols are in place for access to our Home Solutions and Mentoring Services sites. 

DSA has policies and procedures in place to maintain high standards of infection control at our sites at all times. This helps to avoid the potential spread of Coronavirus and other infectious diseases for our participants and also provides a safer workplace for our employees.

Implemented additional COVID-19 precautions across all our services continue to help keep our participants, their friends and families, our employees and the communities we work in safe. 

The measures include:

• Site access measures (temperature checking, visitor registers and illness/travel history questioning) and strict additional hygiene and cleaning.
• Support staff wearing a medical grade face mask in all our services 
• Infection Control Leads ensure enhanced cleaning and hygiene measures are in place at all sites. 
• Updated site access controls and visitor guidelines
• Additional training and support for our staff

On site precautions

All DSA staff involved in supporting our participants are wearing a medical grade face mask at work to minimise the potential spread of infection until further notice. We continuously ensure that all our sites have sufficient supplies on hand. 

We have developed procedures to enact should we have a close exposure or confirmed diagnosis of infection.

All our sites continue to limit access to non-essential visitors, enhance strict personal hygiene and infection control measures and implement social distancing.

These are important measures that can help protect our participants and employees as well as reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the community.

We all play a role in keeping ourselves, our families, participants and communities safe.

Visitor restrictions are in place

We are monitoring NSW Health information daily to ensure we strike that right balance between complying with health advice without being unnecessarily restrictive.

• All our Supported Independent Living sites within the areas deemed to be “Areas with increased testing’ will continue to have visitor access restricted to decision makers and by appointment only.
• All our Supported Independent Living sites will restrict access to any visitor who has been to any location requiring self-isolation and testing or who resides in any area deemed “Increased Testing”.

These locations and LGAs change frequently depending on the COVID situation in the community so adjustments are made at every site following daily checking our the NSW Government’s latest updates.

Ongoing protocols such as site access measures (temperature checking, visitor registers and illness/travel history questioning) and additional strict hygiene and cleaning are continuing at each of the sites.

These important measures can help protect our participants and employees as well as reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the community.

Easy read information for participants

NSW Health also has a page dedicated to Easy Read resources for people with disability. We have also developed story boards and gathered a range of easy read fact sheets for our participants. Resources have been shared to our frontline teams so they can display information on good hygiene and effective handwashing, knowing the symptoms and preventative measures for COVID-19 at all DSA sites.

Impact on services

We understand that enabling social connection is a vital part of supporting our participants’ wellbeing.

We are following new guidelines issued by NSW Health which allows us to support increased visitor access, where it is safe to do so at our Home Solutions and Mentoring Services sites. We have communicated clearly with our participants and potential visitors regarding these guidelines.

Measures such as phone or video calls continue to be utilised to help people keep in touch with family, friends or others and to assist in limiting visits to premises at this time.

Community Solutions day program operations continue provide alternate supports to maintain continuity of service and are continuing to trial the return to service at three sites (Taren Point, East Hills and Blacktown). 

We have returned to providing remote supports for our jobseekers in our SLES and DES programs until further notice.

DSA Packaging Solutions operations are continuing at all sites with additional precautionary measures in place, including strict hygiene measures and the use of face masks.

Be assured that our team is doing everything possible to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of the people we support and our employees, safeguarding our people is vital.