ABOUT LIVELY

Lively is a not-for-profit home care provider with an innovative model that connects generations, creates meaningful employment for young jobseekers and increases the connectedness and inclusion of older people in our community. We train and employ young jobseekers (aged 18–25) to work with and support older people who need a hand maintaining social connection, independence and wellbeing at home. Through this process, we aim to build meaningful relationships that also enable older people to share their rich life experiences, stories and knowledge back with the young, fostering intergenerational understanding and respect, as well as young people’s personal development. You can read more about us and our bold vision for our home care service here and here.

After a year spent conceptualising and working with young and older people to design our home care model, in 2020 we launched operations as a federally approved home care provider. With our first few home care ‘members’ and ‘helpers’ now up and running, and with big plans for the rest of the year, we’re looking for a Care Manager to help us deliver friendly, flexible and high-quality care throughout our community of young and older people.

THE POSITION

As Care Manager, you will play a critical and foundational role in the design and growth of Lively Home Care. You will help us gain traction in new community areas by getting out and about to introduce us and our work to people, groups and services in the local area. And you will be the primary point of contact for older people and their families who wish to engage with our service; guiding them through the process of:

• Getting to know Lively and our unique approach;
• Signing up as members;
• Confirming their funding arrangements;
• Assessing their needs;
• Developing their care plan;
• Connecting them to a suitable young person to work with them as their ‘Lively Helper’; and
• Engaging and monitoring external services as required for any care that our Lively Helpers are not qualified to provide.

You will also be an ongoing point of contact for members and their family, checking in regularly to see how they’re going, and responding to any questions or issues that come up for them along the way.

In addition to your work with our older members and their families, you will also support our young Lively Helpers; monitoring how they’re going with their members, identifying any training and development needs and supporting training processes, as well as being a person for them to turn to with questions about how best to work with and support their members. You’ll also be the first person to step in if you sense that something isn’t going quite right for a member or Helper, helping to resolve the issue as quickly and effectively as possible.

While your role will be largely client-facing, there are some administrative elements that come with the job too. This will include documenting member care plans and budgets, as well as managing referrals through My Aged Care and keeping records to demonstrate our compliance with the Aged Care Act and Aged Care Quality Standards.

Perhaps most importantly, as a core member of a small team, you will also spend significant time contributing in direct and meaningful ways to the design of the Lively Home Care service - bringing your creativity, experience and ideas to bear as we work together to build a model that we think is going to be pretty extraordinary. Fun!

ABOUT YOU

You are, first and foremost, a people person. You have a warm, bright and caring demeanour that makes others feel instantly comfortable, and you have a knack for building rapport with just about anyone. Importantly, your incredible people skills come across no matter what the form of interaction - face-to-face, over the phone, or by email. You’re outgoing, love meeting new people, and have no qualms about fronting up to introduce Lively and our work to people or organisations who haven’t heard of us before. You are also deeply empathetic and able to work sensitively with people who may be going through a vulnerable and challenging time in their life. When they’re working with you, people feel that they’re in safe, caring and competent hands.

You will have qualifications in Aged Care, Nursing or Individual Support, and/or considerable experience working in roles requiring case management and the assessment of individual care needs (ideally this will be in Australia’s home care sector). Importantly, though, you’ll be excited about this role because your professional experience has alerted you to many of the challenges of the aged care sector as it currently operates, and you want to break new ground - throw out the systems, processes and ways of working that really aren’t serving people, and experiment with new and better ways of working to support older community members. You’re ready to challenge our thinking and to have yours challenged in turn!

In addition to your experience and strong people skills, you are:

• Passionate about creating a more positive future for young and older people in our community;
• Exceptionally organised and great at managing your time;
• At your best when you have clear objectives and the freedom to manage your work accordingly;
• Creative, open-minded and flexible - ready to contribute ideas and work through uncertainty and change as we evolve our services;
• Digitally savvy - comfortable using a range of online platforms to carry out your work;
• Collaborative and team-oriented in your approach to work;
• A proactive problem-solver, comfortable exercising initiative and establishing solutions to issues we haven’t encountered before; and
• Diligent about maintaining accurate records, meeting high-quality standards and upholding legislative requirements.

On a personal level, you may be looking for part-time work to achieve a balance with other aspects of your life - whether that’s parenting responsibilities, educational pursuits or other work, interests and goals. And you may identify yourself in any number of different ways; male, female, LGBTI, culturally or linguistically diverse, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, religious, younger, older… you name it, if the qualities, skills and experience we’ve described above sound like you, then please know that your application and potential contribution to our team is warmly welcome. We genuinely believe that the more diverse our team, the better we will be.

WORKING AT LIVELY

Lively is a small and growing organisation; right now, we’re a core team of six. We have, however, secured financial backing to scale our operations, and are quickly moving towards our big and ambitious vision. We’re seeking to build a team of passionate and dynamic people to help us expand our reach and impact, so you’ll be joining us at a pivotal and exciting time of early growth. We’re a positive, warm and lively bunch (thus the name!) and though we may be small right now, we’re committed to providing a rewarding employment experience with lots of opportunity for personal and professional growth.

Working with us at Lively, your fresh ideas are encouraged and creativity welcomed. We’re constantly learning, developing and improving - finding solutions to new and emerging challenges, and working hard to strengthen our foundations for growth. This means that a lot of stuff is still a work in progress, but it also gives you a huge opportunity to see real results from your work - you’ll make a significant contribution to the development of the organisation, and also see that translate into meaningful positive impact in young and older people’s lives. We want you to join us in building an organisation that’s great to work for, as well as one that does great work. Some of the groundwork we’ve already established includes:

• A positive team culture free of bureaucracy, politics, hierarchies or red tape. We work together as friends and equals to help each other do our best work and move the organisation forward, supported by effective structures we’ve set up for sideways accountability.
• A welcoming environment that invites you to feel relaxed and authentic at work - wear comfortable clothes, bring your kids or your pets, make daggy jokes - whatever makes work a pleasant place to go each day.
• Access to a salary packaging scheme and generous leave entitlements.
• A flexible workplace that welcomes remote working and is genuinely accommodating of variable or non-standard hours.

We are building our home care operations off a small initial base of members in Cheltenham and Phillip Island. As such, your role will primarily involve contact with communities, members and Helpers between and around these areas, and we are ideally looking for somebody with some relevant local knowledge and networks. With our head office based in North Melbourne, you may find that your work is predominantly remote, but with plenty of virtual contact to keep you feeling part of the team (we’ll work with you to develop an arrangement that helps you feel supported and connected in your role). As the work will involve hitting the road to visit clients in their own homes, you will need access to a car.

While the role is offered as a fixed-term position due to our confirmed funding arrangements, we hope to engage a long-term team member in the role. The role is offered with a negotiable time fraction; we expect the workload to be 0.6-0.8 FTE in the initial months; however, as we bring on more members it may quickly progress to a full-time load. Further, to provide continuity of care and support for our members, it will be necessary to be contactable outside of ordinary hours. As such, we are open to negotiating an arrangement that suits you, including flexible hours and appropriate arrangements for time in lieu if working part-time. Whether you are seeking full-time or part-time employment, we welcome your application (job sharing will be an option if transitioning to full-time employment doesn’t suit you). The full-time equivalent salary for the role is $80,000 plus superannuation, with salary packaging benefits.