Help For Our Most Vulnerable During Lockdown: Disability Service Offered Free
Mycare, the online support worker platform (www.mycare.co.nz), today announced all disability users, their families and whanau can use Mycare without paying subscription or service fees during the lockdown.
It is also offering its services at no cost to NGO’s who want to use Mycare’s platform to manage and mobilise volunteer services to the community.
“We want to help at a time when
access to community support workers is critical,” says
Mycare director Mark Jeffries.
Jeffries says the
lockdown is putting pressure on families and whanau needing
to find support workers for essential
services.
“Disabled clients and their families need access and choices for support, so Mycare is one way people can access a pool of workers, and directly sort out what they need. Mycare connects them with support workers in communities right across NZ, from Kaitaia to Bluff.”
Most Mycare users and their families are
from the disabled community, older people, or people with
injuries. The company is seeing an upturn in kiwis who are
offshore or somewhere else in New Zealand arranging extra
help back here for their whanau.
On the worker
side, Jeffries says the motivation and response of the
worker community has been humbling. “Mycare is talking to
its community of about 11,000 workers to get an update on
each worker’s readiness and availability. In the past 24
hours alone hundreds of workers from all over New Zealand
have updated their profiles or put themselves
forward.”
Jeffries says one new issue is PPE
such as masks and gloves for families and their support
workers. “The DHBs were fantastic, they worked through
last weekend to deliver PPE to us so now we can distribute
PPE to families and their
workers.”
ENDS