Volunteers committed to helping others

Mersey Community Care Association (MCCA) is just one of a network of home support providers, delivering services to both Commonwealth and State HACC clients who live along the North West Coast, of Tasmania. MCCA has been providing services to the community since 1971, when a hand full of community members started what has become an icon of our community.

To achieve the excellent results that the organisation has built a reputation upon, it has always relied on the goodwill of a dedicated team of volunteers to undertake the work required to ensure that people receive support.

MCCA offers Transport, Social Support, Spring Cleaning and Home Maintenance services to clients and their carers, living in the Devonport, Latrobe, Kentish and Central Coast municipalities.

The hard times that have affected most industries throughout the past few years have also had an effect on the organisation’s ability to delivery year round support to our client base of almost 1400 people.

Unfortunately, the huge demand for Home Maintenance services and the lack of resources has made it impossible for the organisation to fulfil all of the client requests for support. The organisation is hoping that the opportunity for growth funding, is made available in the near future, to allow the organisation to continue to support people to maintain their homes in a safe and habitable condition.

Twice throughout 2016, Mersey Community Care has been forced to close the Home Maintenance Service completely, in an attempt to catch up on the back log of work that has built up.

The President of MCCA, Mr Michael Harper said, “I have received feedback from both staff and volunteers of MCCA, who said that they are concerned that frail, older persons and younger people with a disability may be living in situations that could place their health and well-being at risk. The volunteers will often come back after a job, frustrated that they are not able to do more for the clients”.

Mr Harper went onto say, “During the past 12 months, MCCA volunteers have completed 4578 hours of home maintenance work, to 825 clients and 364 clients have received 708 hours of Spring Cleaning.

With many elderly people choosing to remain living in their own home for as long as possible, MCCA would expect that the demand for the Home Maintenance Service will increase into the future”.

MCCA would like to extend an invitation to anyone who may have 4 hours a month to spare and is interested in becoming part of a dynamic team of volunteers, to call into our office at 167 Steele Street, Devonport and talk to our Volunteer Coordinator about how you can help.
Kathryn Edmunds