Important update - Parkerville group home

As you are aware, back in January this year, the hottest time of the year no less… we had a fire at our largest supported accommodation home up in Parkerville – Andrew’s Place. Our three hero support workers Glenn Allsop, Harrison Kamau and Scott Perry were on shift that day and rescued the ten residents from the house and evacuated to Helen’s Place.
 
Since that day a mammoth amount of work has gone into settling everyone into various homes across Perth within our existing supported accommodation program. We have supported people where we had vacant housing stock, as well as where we had vacancies within the program while the Rise Property team made plans with the insurance company to assess the damage and arrange repairs so we could return home to Parkerville.
 
However while this has been occurring in the background, we have been listening to the feedback from our clients and staff, and we now recognise that the people we support are actually happier in the smaller homes we have since provided them with.
 
This has been a very unexpected outcome, however in hindsight perhaps it isn’t so surprising.
 
Andrew’s Place is a large, 12 bedroom house that has a lot of history attached – it is named after Andrew Catchpole, the young man who tragically went missing in the Perth hills bush in 2006. His  family very generously gifted the property in part to Hills Community Support Group (HCSG) as we were known back then.
 
Back in 2006, large group homes were the norm, however times have changed and the sector now recognises people want to live in smaller homes with less housemates. Our clients have told us the same thing.
 
It appears the fire at Parkerville has had a silver lining, and that was an opportunity for us to do things differently, and an opportunity to hear from our people.
 
We have made the decision that we will not be going back to Parkerville.
 
Our clients and their families and guardians are aware, as are the teams that support them at Rise.
 
We do not have an exact date of when all our planned changes will be finalised, however hope to have everyone settled in their residences by August.
 
I trust that the wider organisation will continue to support us while we undergo this transition process. I will continue to update the areas of the business as required. Please disseminate this information to anyone within your teams who needs to be made aware.
 
Thank you again to everyone who has been involved in supporting our people ever since this event took place in January. If anyone has any questions, comments or concerns I am very happy for you to contact me directly.
 
Vanessa Williams - Service Delivery Manager, PwD
0437 206 932