Helping Hand

21/12/2025

Alongside our Summer issue of At Home, we’re excited to present a special Christmas edition, with a wish to all our readers for a joyful and peaceful festive season 🎄

Click below to read some delightful stories, get some foodie inspiration, and take five with puzzles.
https://www.helpinghand.org.au/about-us/resources/our-publications/

19/12/2025

Change and loss touch us all. Whether it’s moving into a new stage of life or saying goodbye to someone we love, grief can feel overwhelming — but no one should walk through it alone.

In this episode of Age Old Problems: New Aged Care, Helping Hand’s Coordinating Chaplain, Paul Hodgson, gently explores the many ways grief shows up in our lives and how we can support each other through it.

🎧 Listen in for comfort, understanding, and practical advice for when you or someone you love is grieving.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5uXiyAY0OD2z0b8HKDgEKp

Age Old Problems: New Aged Care · Episode

15/12/2025

Tuesday Tips to live your best 60+ life!

Tip of the week: Stay Cool and Hydrated
Cheers to hydration! Keep chilled water handy during summer celebrations. Add mint or lemon for freshness.

14/12/2025

We’ve added more There to Care Award recipient stories from our fourth quarter celebrations!

Each of these stories highlights the care, dedication and heart our people bring to their work — whether supporting residents, clients, families, or each other.

Our recipients truly live our values of Excellence, Respect, Compassion and Community, and we’re proud to recognise their impact.

Read more of their stories here: https://www.helpinghand.org.au/there-to-care-awards-fourth-quarter-award-recipients-announced/

Helping Hand provides home care, wellness, retirement living and residential aged care in metro Adelaide and regional South Australia.

13/12/2025

There has been an update to the Disability Parking Permit Scheme in SA!

For the first time in 25 years, the SA Government has updated the Disability Parking Permit scheme. These changes, effective from 24 November 2025, expand eligibility to include people with cognitive, behavioural, and neurological conditions — such as dementia.

This is a big step toward a more inclusive understanding of disability and will help more South Australians, including those with dementia, access accessible parking.

To learn more or apply, read the Service SA announcement: https://service.sa.gov.au/news?a=1558677

11/12/2025

PEOPLE OF HELPING HAND

Betty – A natural caretaker, full of life and joy.

Meet Betty, whose cheerful nature and positive outlook on life are truly infectious! You can feel her joy the moment you walk into her room and be warned, she won’t let you leave without a hug and a squeeze goodbye. A resident at Helping Hand’s Belalie Lodge in Jamestown, Betty was born just down the road in Terowie in 1944, at the end of the war.

“My dad worked on the railways and my mum was a housewife,” she said.

Betty remembers her family having cows that were registered like you would your cats and dogs these days, complete with large metal neck tags.

“For quite a while we didn’t have a cow shed, and poor old Mum, rain or shine, would sit along the fence line to milk them,” she said.

Betty left school in her early teens to help care for her mum, who had poor health.

“Some teachers were disappointed, but I had to help at home, look after the cows and the pet sheep we ended up collecting,” she said.

“Most people didn’t have much money back then. I was lucky to get a shilling or two as pocket money. For a penny, I could buy four lollies and liquorice squares, which I loved!”

In her late teens Betty helped on a local farm.

“I did housework, dishes, and fed livestock during shearing season,” she said.

She also helped milk cows and feed pigs when the family went on holidays.

Later, the postmaster Mr Hepworth introduced her to a local family, who needed help with housework and childminding.

“I started around the time their daughter Jane was born,” Betty said.

The father of the family she worked for would pick her up on Sunday nights and she would stay with them through the week before returning on Fridays with Mr Hepworth on the mail run. The family welcomed her as one of their own and even made her Jane’s godmother.

“Their son Richard has visited me since I moved in here, which is beautiful,” she said.

Word spread, and Betty ended up working for two more families, helping with children and housework.

“Those three families, I’ll never forget them. They treated me like family and were so kind,” she said.

Betty also worked four and a half years at the local hospital in the kitchen and nurses’ station before returning home to care for her aging parents.

“After Dad died, I married and mum came to live with us,” she said.

Derek, Betty’s husband, had two Colin and Steven. Colin married Tanya, and through them, Betty became a grandma.

Even though Betty never had children of her own, she helped raise many, had two stepsons, and grandchildren.

With Colin and Tanya’s help, Betty moved from Peterborough to Jamestown when she became older, finding a block of land and a transportable home to be closer to them.

“When things got harder, they encouraged me to try respite here,” she said.

While Betty says it was a big change moving from a two-bedroom house, she made it her own.

“I brought in some trinkets and I’m really happy here,” she said.

“The workers and residents are amazing. I love them to bits.”

08/12/2025

Tuesday Tips to live your best 60+ life!

Tip of the week: Happy Playlist for the Season
Your soundtrack to a joyful season. Make a playlist of songs that lift your mood. Play it while cooking or decorating.

05/12/2025

Today on International Volunteer Day (Friday 5 December), we’re shining a light on the incredible volunteers who give their time, energy and compassion to Helping Hand. With more than 150 volunteers across our homes, they bring laughter, friendship, exercise, creativity and connection into the lives of residents every single day. We simply couldn’t do it without them.

In this episode of Age Old Problems: New Aged Care, we meet Kaye, one of our inspiring volunteers. She shares the joy and purpose she’s found in aged care volunteering, and why her advice to anyone thinking about it is simple: “Just give it a go! You’ll find that you will absolutely love it.”

🎧 Tune in to hear Kaye’s story and celebrate the difference volunteering makes in aged care.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fHJ4dP2no00nPS0DYtAbC

Age Old Problems: New Aged Care · Episode

02/12/2025

Today is , and we’re proud to honour the diversity in our community. We acknowledge that people with disabilities have the same rights as everyone else. Today, we celebrate the strength and resilience of our clients, their families, friends, and carers as they work to overcome barriers to wellbeing and independence.

Find out more about the day here:

The International Day of Disabled Persons aims to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development.

01/12/2025

Tuesday Tips to live your best 60+ life!

Tip of the week: Freeze Your Herbs
No more wasted herbs! Chop herbs, freeze in ice cube trays with oil or water. Fresh flavour any time!

01/12/2025

Expressions of interest are open for Helping Hand’s 2026 Consumer Advisory Body. Made up of home care clients, residents, and family members, the Consumer Advisory Body (CAB) meets four times a year and supports a range of engagement activities across the organisation which influence and inform service, care, policy and project delivery, as well as engaging directly with the Helping Hand Board.

In 2025, members of the CAB helped shape new Principles of Care, our 2025-2030 Strategic Plan, a new fundraising strategy, residential care redevelopment decisions, and shared powerful consumer stories which are now incorporated into new staff induction to help bring our values and the Strengthened Standards to life.

Expressions of Interest close 19 December. Everyone is welcome to nominate. You can find more information and can complete an online Expression of Interest here: https://www.helpinghand.org.au/about-us/consumer-engagement/

30/11/2025

We’re delighted to share the latest recipients of our There to Care Awards!

These awards recognise Helping Hand people — staff and volunteers — who live our values of Excellence, Respect, Compassion and Community every day.

From small gestures of kindness to outstanding teamwork and leadership, our recipients show what caring with heart really looks like.

Congratulations to all our Q4 award recipients, and thank you for being there to care and here for good.

Read their stories here: https://www.helpinghand.org.au/there-to-care-awards-fourth-quarter-award-recipients-announced/

Helping Hand provides home care, wellness, retirement living and residential aged care in metro Adelaide and regional South Australia.