We’ve spent more than 35 years working alongside people in the Aged Care & Health sectors, learning the ins-and-outs, and tracking all of the training and compliance requirements as they have changed. But we’ve always confined ourselves to the hospitality side of things – providing good people for the kitchen and front of house.

As the “Care” side of our operation has grown (Aged, Child & Health Care), we’ve frequently been asked if we provide Personal Care people, but have had to say that we don’t. However, as an increasing number of our Food Service people in those environments have dual-qualified in Personal Care, we’ve decided to broaden our services to include Personal Carers.

Our approach to entering this new aspect of our operation will be the same as it has been for over 35 years. We are a high-touch, people-first organisation. We like to know our team members, our clients & their team members, and also our clients’ sites. Our aim is to provide people with a good “fit” for the roles they will fill, with relevant skills & experience – and a great capacity to communicate and get along with everyone. All of our Personal Carers will have a minimum Cert III in Individual Care, previous experience and have completed our manual handling refresher – so that everyone is safe.

Having spent decades working in these high-care environments, and particularly where the elderly are concerned, we know the importance of having the same people return to site, even if there is some time between their visits. On this front, we aim to work closely with our clients to do everything possible to have a small team of people familiar with their site and residents. There’s nothing more likely to unsettle someone who’s feeling a bit vulnerable than a new face who they’ve not seen before. So addressing this important aspect of team allocation is high on our list of priorities.

The other benefit that our team brings to supply into these Caring environments is that many of our Personal Carers are also trained and experienced on the hospitality side of things. So if there’s a need for them to jump into the kitchen and give the hospitality team a hand, they can easily do so. To this end, all of our Personal Carers, just like all of our food & beverage team, have Food Safety and IDDSI (Dysphagia) certifications – so that they are aware of these important aspects of working in Care environments.

Probably the “last” thing that makes us different from many others offering access to Personal Carers is the care we take with all aspects of Compliance. We understand the importance of checks, references and qualifications where we are working with vulnerable people. In this context, we are a registered NDIS employer and everyone who works in a Care environment for us has an NDIS Check (which includes a National Police Check), has had their details checked against the Aged Care and NDIS Banning Orders registers, and is registered to us as their employer – so that their employment with both Chefs On The Run and other employers is tracked. This way, any failure of an employee to comply with the required standards is brought to our attention, so we can remove them from the Brigade.

We’re greatly looking forward to this next chapter in our life and looking forward to expanding our team into this important aspect of providing Care. So if you’re at all interested in either joining our team, or having one of them spend some time with you, just give us a call!