Bolton Clarke
 
Our guest speaker at the zoom meeting  last Tuesday was Theresamarie Hanley from the nursing company Bolton Clarke which  provides independent living services through -home care, retirement living and residential aged care
She was introduced by our Norm Draper . Her address had exceptional interest for our Club because of our  important project each December of supplying Xmas bags to
the elderly in our local community. Last year we also had the support of  suppliers such as Bendigo Bank East Keilor, Sukin Organics, Ferguson Plarre Bakehouse, The Reject Shop, Jason Atkins Pharmacy, Pharmacy Alliance and Sigma Co Limited
We hope once again to distribute these   Bags at Christmas time with the assistance of  Bolton Clarke
 
Norm had asked Theresamarie to particularly speak to us about Bolton Clarke's recent activities and programs generally and about how it has been impacted by and handled the COVID-19 circumstances - including the respective impacts of the various lockdown stages we have faced.
Theresamarie   was very happy to be asked to speak to our club as her husband’s family has spent much of their lives working for Rotary in Reservoir and beyond.
 
Theresamaries background is that she has been in district nursing since 1991. She started in the Essendon area as a primary care nurse before spending 15 years as part of the palliative care team caring for dying clients at home.  She then worked at the Customer Service Centre taking clinical calls and managing an out of hours nursing team.  Two and half years ago she moved to Bolton Clarke’s West Hub and is now the Operations Manager of its Western Region.
Theresamarie is very proud to be working with the Bolton Clark nurses especially at the moment as they have shown such great resilience and flexibility during this pandemic.  This pandemic is not the first the nurses have faced.  Through Bolton Clarke’s forebears the Melbourne District Nursing Society established in the late 1880’s and the RSL, established in 1916, it had a heavy involvement in the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1919 - and has followed that with another 100 years of providing nursing care and support to vulnerable people in Melbourne before our current COVID-19 pandemic struck.
 
From a single nurse walking the streets of Melbourne to our first veterans hostel in Brisbane the company’s tradition of care and history of service continues to inspire and guide their work. Their  long held values of compassion and respect remain at the heart of everything they do.  So Bolton Clarke offers a lot of services to support more people across home care, retirement living and residential aged around Australia thus enabling clients  to live their  best possible life.
Theresamarie’s presentation was very inspiring