GRAND IDEA ADDS VALUE TO LIFE
WHEN Kelly Casey was at a Gold Coast aged care facility to visit her elderly grandparents, she realised how lonely many residents were.
The mum of one decided to volunteer but quickly found there were no programs for the public to get involved at aged care facilities.
Not one to give up easily, the hinterland resident decided to create her own program and Adopt A Grandparent was born.
It started in 2019, with one nursing home. It now has 26 – 22 on the Coast, two in Townsville, one in Brisbane and Bundaberg.
It connects willing volunteers to elderly residents, allowing them to write to each other and send care packages for special occasions.
“When I used to visit my grandparents I saw there were many residents who did not get outside visitors, they wouldn’t see anyone but staff members or other residents,” Ms Casey said.
“There are people out there who don’t have anyone. They need to be validated, they love to share their stories and talk about their lives.
Adopt A Grandparent has special community drives at
Christmas, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and is partnering with another charity to make blankets for dementia patients.
Bernie Kreyzig is a resident at a Nerang nursing home and he just lights up when he gets a visitor.
Clanwilliam Aged Care Nerang’s leisure co-ordinator Adam Grant said even residents with family visits benefited from a third party: “A fresh set of eyes and ears to tell stories and talk about things they have done, someone regularly showing an interest in their lives adds value to their day.”
A GOLD Coast bar owner violently choked a woman until she gasped for air and mouthed ‘I’m sorry’, a court has been told.
Agreed facts show Rosella’s coowner Jonathan Debeere, 31, attacked the woman in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
“Your pupils enlarged with rage. I had to make out the words, ‘I’m sorry’, for you to stop ... it was like you were possessed,” the woman wrote in the letter tendered in court.
She described Debeere’s “animal rage”, how he threw the dinner she made on the floor and “strangled” her for 10 seconds while she was crying.
On the second occasion, Debeere (right) threw her phone against a wall, threw her to the ground and held her down by her arms causing bruising.
On Friday, Debeere was sentenced in the NSW District Court to a two-year correction order for the offences which took place between 6-14 September, 2015. He pleaded guilty to intentionally choking a person with recklessness, with a charge of assault occasioning bodily harm and damaging property being taken into account by Judge Ian McClintock SC.
Judge McClintock ordered Debeere to continue seeing a psychologist and abide by the “stringent” order. He cannot commit another criminal offence while on the order and will be supervised by a corrections officer at Tweed Heads.
The order will run until March 2023. In the letter to the court, the woman said she was on a “horrendous rollercoaster” after the attack.
“Vividly, I remember you spitting in my face for wearing a dress I disagreed with to a university ball,” she wrote.
Agreed facts tendered to the court of texts between them reveal a disturbing conversation exchanged on Facebook.
She wrote: “People die from being choked”. Debeere replied: “Yes I know (her name) trust me, I hate it about me.”
Debeere declined to comment when contacted on Thursday. He and a friend opened Rosella’s Australiana bar in Burleigh Heads in January 2019.