voices

I n s i d e t h i s

i s s u e :

Program Profiles

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What’s

Happening at

GVCSS

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Human Resources

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Health, Safety and Wellness

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S p e c i a l p o i n t s

o f i n t e r e s t :

Home Support: Update p2

Community Living Update p3

MPP information sessions p4

WellnessFits p5

Employee Recognition Backpage

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I would like to extend my personal appreciation to everyone in the organization who participated in our strategic planning review. This extensive rigorous organizational assessment has provided our Agency with an excellent framework for identifying, designing and implementing major new initiatives to ensure that GVCSS remains a leader in the delivery of community care services. Furthermore, your ideas and suggestions as to where improvements are needed in the organization have made the planning process more relevant and meaningful to our Board of Directors. To the best of our ability we have tried to incorporate your views and suggestions into our long term planning process and we thank you, the staff of GVCSS for your valuable assistance in charting a future course for GVCSS.

The 5 key strategic objectives (shown below) have been approved to strengthen our existing

foundation upon which the GVCSS reputation of providing high quality service has been built, while also preparing our organization to seek out growth and expansion opportunities that are consistent with our mission and vision.

In the months to come we will develop an action plan that describes in greater detail how we intend to implement these objectives, and share with you the progress of each new initiative.

Thanks again for your support of the important work done by this organization, and the valuable role that you play in delivering health care services to our clients.

Please contact me if you would like to discuss this topic further at:

rmcleod@gvcss.bc.ca or 604 714-3500.

GVCSS Strategic Plan 2013—2016 Message from CEO Ron McLeod

This new GVCSS Strategic Plan will guide our priorities and activities for the

period 2013-2016:

Increase our presence in the health and social services community through networking, social media, and actively seeking opportunities to share our knowledge and expertise in public forums.

Strengthen communication channels throughout the organization to provide all stakeholders with access to information they need, and to instill a culture of inclusiveness and transparency.

Provide professional training and development opportunities to the Board of Directors, Leadership Team, and all employees to continually learn and adopt best practices, and cultivate leadership development through succession planning to ensure people with requisite knowledge, skills and abilities can fulfill future vacancies.

Leverage technology to be more operationally efficient and to improve the quality of service provided to the population we serve.

Identify and respond to opportunities for new services that fulfill unmet needs within the community and are compatible with our Agency’s vision, mission, and core capabilities.

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Program Profiles—HS /What’s Happening

Home Support Trainings

What’s Happening at GVCSS

Holiday Party Tickets

Tickets go on sale from October 21 to

November 22, and it’s first come first

serve!

This year’s event is partially sponsored by

the Society in recognition of our

employee’s contributions to GVCSS, so

employee tickets will only be $10!

There are only 250 tickets so you will have

to act fast if you’d like to secure your ticket.

Guests (non-GVCSS employees) will be

charged at the full ticket price of $50. As

employees have first priority, guests will be

placed on a waiting list until the last week

of ticket sales.

You can purchase your ticket from Laura

Johnson in Human Resources, and

Community Living employees may

purchase theirs from their supervisors.

This year’s party will be at the Century

Plaza Hotel (same location as last year) on

Saturday, December 7.

Summer Potluck Picnic

We had a wonderful time at the Annual

Summer Picnic on August 25th. More than 90

GVCSS employees and their guests attended

and enjoyed great food, games and laughs!

Sea Wall in the Fall

Join the GVCSS Social Committee for an end-of-summer stroll around the seawall in Stanley Park on Wednesday, September 18. Meet at Lumberman’s Arch at 6pm. Bring your water bottle and dress for the weather. We’re walking rain or shine! Please RSVP to Justin at 604 714-3505.

Many of the CHWs in Home Support have completed their competency training in Palliative Care, Dementia Care, Medication Management and Falls. As a requirement of our contract with the health authority, GVCSS is expected to hold follow up competency training in each of these areas every other year – just to make sure everyone is up to date with their skills in each of these areas. In October, Maria and her team in the Nursing Department will be holding follow up sessions to Palliative Care and Medication Management. Your Supervi-sor will schedule you for a 90 minutes session in the office. This will be a different session to the Palliative and Dementia sessions that were run in September! Please ensure your active participation in these sessions and come prepared to learn!

Vacation Planning

Vacation planning time is coming up in November so we encourage all regular Community

Health Workers to start thinking ahead to what holiday time you’d like to take.

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Program Profiles—CL

Duc Sept 9

Alex Sept 23

Kirby Oct 1

Sean Nov 3

John Nov 21

Happy Birthday!

Individuals Celebrating Birthdays This Quarter

Team Depot Paints Doman House On July 5th, The Home Depot’s Team Depot painted Doman House’s interior walls. Team Depot is The Home Depot's associate volunteer program. Through Team Depot, associates are encouraged and empowered to take a leadership role in the community by organizing and volunteering on projects with local community partners. Employees from the Terminal Avenue store in Vancouver spent their day off painting the common areas including living room, kitchen, hallway, bathroom and family room of our East Vancouver-based group home. In addition to providing volunteer labour, Home Depot also donated premium paint and all supplies. The Team Depot volunteers were happy to participate, working cheerfully

and having fun as they painted. While they were not able meet the group

home residents, who were out for the day, the volunteers took satisfaction

in knowing that their efforts would put smiles on the residents’ faces.

Thank you to store manager Jabin Saggu for making this day possible. In

addition to donating volunteers and all supplies, his store has also donated

300 shopping bags to our 2012 and 2013 GVCSS Care Packages charity

initiative. We are grateful to Jabin and his Team Depot members for their

generosity.

Steveston House

supervisor Tammy was a

contest winner on Virgin

Radio 95 on July 18,

winning cd’s and coffee

mugs for the group home,

along with a visit from the

Virgin Radio team! The

residents were excited to

enjoy the treats & coffee!

Pictures of the group home

visit were posted on

Facebook.

Coleman House resident Kirby threw the first pitch at the July 14th Vancouver Canadians’ game against the Boise Hawks. He was cheered on by Community Living residents and staff in the stands, along with other GVCSS employees and their guests. We are thankful to the Vancouver Canadians for donating tickets to Community Living this season so that all residents could attend a game.

Kirby Pitches at the Canadians’ Game

Team Depot members (Home Depot employee volunteers)

gather on the front steps at Doman House

Kirby (left) gets ready to throw the first pitch,

accompanied by Community Living Director Melanie.

In Other News...

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Join us in welcoming these

new employees to GVCSS:

HOME SUPPORT Supervisors Aliez Kay Community Health Workers Roya Khosravani Violeta Bagangan Theresa Velasco Jovelyn Lunas Suzanne McKeown Gayotri Das Reynalyn Dutdut Annabelle Piquero Dina Joy Daquio Marivic Arciaga Frances Tang Joy Jumilla Yi (Sue) Shou Gary Wong Sonia Garcia COMMUNITY LIVING Supervisors Diane Arnold Community Living Workers Mariya Yurchuk

Karen Foster, CHRP Director of Human Resources Employee relations 604 714-3508

Laura Johnson HR and Operations Officer Newsletter, EPP, Website Access 604 714-3517

Justin Giddens Human Resources Coordinator Recruitment, Benefits 604 714-3505

Human Resources

TransLink Cancelling Employer Pass Program

TransLink is cancelling its Employer Pass Program due to funding concerns. The program will remain

in effect until December 31, 2013. You may continue to use your pass until the end of the year; there

will be no new EPP passes issued for 2014. Beginning January 1, 2014, you may wish to purchase a

monthly transit pass from a retail outlet such as 7-11 or Safeway.

Nearing a crossroad?

Within five years of retirement?

Learn about:

Determining your retirement income

Pension options

Online pension planning tools and resources

Your Member’s Benefit Statement

Pre-register for a free seminar at

mpp.pensionsbc.ca

Click on Resources > Pension Information Seminars

Questions? Email MPPseminars@pensionsbc.ca or call 250 356-8547 in Victoria or toll-

free in BC at 1 877 558-5573.

Benefits

If you are experiencing any issues with processing your extended health benefits claims,

please contact Justin for assistance at 604 714-3505 or Elaine Hsu at the Dupuis Langen

Group at 604 242-0112.

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Wellness

The Home Support JOSH Committee would like to remind all of our Community Health Workers to wear your ID cards at all times

while on the job.

Please remember to gain access into apartment buildings by contacting either the client, building management, or a suitable

contact, and to not follow other tenants into buildings to gain access. This will reduce the opportunity for safety hazards and

potential incidents at your workplace.

Thank you to those of you who completed the WellnessFits

survey a few months back, your feedback has been very

helpful in getting our plans under way for the WellnessFits

program. We are ready to get this program off the ground!

Briefly, the WellnessFits program is designed to provide us

with fun, interactive information and tools to help learn

about a variety of health topics, practice health behaviours

in our everyday lives and at work, and to help create a

supportive workplace environment at GVCSS so that

everyone feels supported in making healthy choices on an

ongoing basis. Some of the topics include healthy eating,

physical activity, healthy minds, early detection and

screening, etc.

As some of you may know, we have started a Wellness

Committee to help with these efforts. We would like to

formally introduce you to the committee; your

representatives are Karen Foster, Diana Hill, Justin

Giddens, Linh Hy, Tammy McMillen, Elise Gilchrist, and

Luba Federova. Please feel free to send any questions,

comments, concerns or feedback to any of your Wellness

Committee members; they are there to represent everyone

at GVCSS.

Over the next year, we will be focusing on providing

information, tools and resources on a variety of health

topics and hopefully getting people together for a few fun

activities as well. A member of the Wellness Committee will

be coming out to each of the team meetings over the next

few months to introduce everyone to the WellnessFits

program, provide an overview of what we hope to work

Remember to Wear Your ID Tags!

towards over the next year and get any additional input

from staff about what you might like to see.

One of the tools we get access to with the WellnessFits

program is our own web application – https://

gvcss.wellnessfits.ca/user/login. Through this web-

based tool, you will have access to information, tracking

tools, and eventually activities/challenges to help us

address these health topics in our own lives and with our

families. In order to get access to this web application, we

need to upload an email address for you. When your

Wellness Committee representative comes out to do the

introduction, they will have a spreadsheet for you to enter

your email address if you would like to get access to the

online tools. Alternatively, if you are comfortable sharing

your email address in advance, please send an email to

Justin Giddens at jgiddens@gvcss.bc.ca with your

preferred email. You will eventually receive an email from

noreply@wellnessfits.ca inviting you to register for the

website.

*Please be assured that all information entered on the

website will be strictly private and confidential. You are the

only person who will see the information you track using

the website.

As an added incentive - everyone who registers with the

website in the next two weeks (September 13-27) will be

entered into a draw prize for a $15 gift card to Booster

Juice.

Announcements

Suite 500 1212 West Broadway

Vancouver, B.C. V6H 3V1

Phone: 604.737.4900 Fax: 604.737.2922 info@gvcss.bc.ca

Congratulations once again to all of our 2013 long term

service recipients at GVCSS. We wish to ensure that you are

recognized during your milestone year with the Society. As

identified in the information package mailed to you in August,

remember to select your award gift by September 23rd and to

contact Laura Johnson regarding your interest in attending the

holiday party as soon as possible, and no later than

November 15th.

GVCSS 2013 Long Term Service Recognition Sponsored by GVCSS Board of Directors

Becoming COR (certificate of recognition) certified with WorksafeBC is a very great honour and we are happy to announce that we successfully audited the week of August 12th, achieving the high score of 92% on our first audit! Thank you to those employees who were willing to come in and/or make yourselves available to be interviewed during the audit. Your participation was very important and your contribution helped us to achieve certification!

GVCSS’s organizational policy refers to keeping our workers safe and healthy and we regularly train staff and communicate the importance of safety to keep them safe as they carry out their roles in the community. In an effort to reinforce this, GVCSS embarked on the COR project to help us further develop our health and safety program. For the last 5 months

We are COR Certified! director representatives from each of the departments

have been working to write and circulate policy,

procedure and safe work practices and implement new

components of our program which we will continue to

develop over the next several months. Like in any audit,

we receive a number of recommendations and

suggestions. Recommendations require an action plan

and suggestions are loosely translated into “food for

thought”. The director representatives have been busy

developing an action plan that is required to be submitted

to the Municipal Safety Council and all of you will see

some further changes to procedure as we move forward

over the next several months. Stay tuned and be safe!

If you are a 2013 award recipient and have not received

your information package, or if you have any questions

regarding the awards selection process, please contact

Diane Raniseth at 604-714-3501; draniseth@gvcss.bc.ca;

or Laura Johnson at 604-714-3517; ljohnson@gvcss.bc.ca

as soon as possible.

To view our 2013 Recognition list, check out the “Employee

Recognition” section on the Employee area of the GVCSS

web site www.gvcss.bc.ca.

Care Packages - Next Challenge

Thank you to all GVCSS staff who have contributed to the Care Packages initiative so far. We

are now launching our final appeal for this year’s event, an agency-wide challenge to collect

much needed items. Check with your supervisor for details!

Care Packages Challenge team leaders

recently competed in a race to earn extra

points and learn the next item to collect.

Congratulations to Jennifer for winning for

the Area B team!