Blog

Catherine Hall, CEO, Alzheimers New Zealand

1. What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given recently?
‘Be prepared, not scared’ was something a person with dementia said – it was said for different reasons but was apt and stayed with me as we navigated our way through lockdown. Our preparation began when we saw how COVID-19 was unfolding overseas, prompting us to plan how we would operate to ensure the continuity of our service and agreeing the triggers for moving from one stage to another. So while lockdown arrived sooner than we had anticipated we did move into it well prepared and were able to adapt quickly.

2. What’s been the most challenging part of the lockdown journey?
The uncertainty. We have a huge responsibility when we work to help others in the human services space. Being prepared helped mitigate the uncertainty and meant we could continue to serve the people we exist for and provide a clear pathway for staff.

The second challenge was getting information when it was needed. The health sector had done a lot of preparation but it appeared to be focused on the front-line response in hospitals and less so on the aged care sector, which is where most of the risk lies. Prompting the health sector to focus on vulnerable people was a challenge.

3. What’s the smallest change that’s had the greatest impact?
We had a long-term goal to introduce online options to our suite of services but it was in the early stages. COVID-19 meant we had to fast track this work and make it available sooner. In addition to technology we added other modes of communication such as text, phone and mailing activity packs to carers in order to support our members remotely. Each of these are examples of small initiatives that had a significant impact.

4. What’s been your biggest learning?
I like working from home! I didn’t expect to as I was concerned about having clear boundaries but I have discovered I do. I think it helped that it was a shared experience – we have now moved to a mixed model which is working well.

5. What have you been surprised by?
How many of our clients had an online presence and were able to engage remotely with ease. This was interesting as we had planned pre-COVID to move to online options but had been slow to do so because there was a view that few of our clients would have the ability to do so. It turns out 60% of our clients were connected and responded positively.

As a national organisation this has highlighted that it doesn’t matter where the services are delivered from or where the people are when they receive these services. It sounds obvious but we are now looking at things differently, particularly as people are now more open to alternative options.

6. Strategically, what’s the biggest opportunity lockdown has created for your organisation?
To re-evaluate what supporting people with dementia should look like. Lockdown provided the impetus to introduce changes which we’d been considering for some time and which quickly proved their worth. Leveraging this success, and the more open mindset that now exists within the organisation, is a huge opportunity. We need to capitalise on these new ways of thinking to discover how we can better serve those we exist for.

7. What are you most proud of?
Our level of preparedness and how quickly we were able to introduce new services, communication channels and resources, and the level of support we provided our regional members and clients as they were introduced to these new initiatives. I was also proud of everyone’s willingness to try and to learn as we went.

8. Have you implemented any changes that you will keep post lockdown?
We’ll continue to develop our digital capability and to provide clients with a broader range of options to connect with. Secondly, we’ll harness the openness, nimble decision making and agility we demonstrated during lockdown to make us a more responsive, impactful organisation.

9. Most non-profits have seen their fundraising opportunity shrink. How should the sector respond to this?
It is a challenge and most non-profits have seen fundraising activities and events, corporate partnerships and philanthropic funding come to an end.

I believe the first two are ours to fix as a sector – how do we become sustainable and is this in fact an achievable goal in a sector that is set up to operate on a month by month year by year funding cycle? I think an important response at this point in time is to think about how we could be funded and operate differently as a sector. It’s important also that government understand how dependent non-profits are on particular types of funding and volunteering to do their core work. A timely consideration when one considers the government’s reliance during lockdown on NGOs to support so many vulnerable groups of people.

10. The future of the non-profit sector is…
Being more collaborative. This is already core to the sector but a highlight during lockdown was seeing at a local level the extent to which NGOs worked together. Sometimes with local council and DHBs, and sometimes self-managing to ensure there wasn’t overlap with at-risk clients. This approach to working together definitely gained traction during lockdown and I hope it continues.