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From: Rob.Bates@p1.f381.n634.z3.fidonet.org (Rob Bates)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Australian AIDS News
Message-ID: <29814@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 7 Dec 89 08:07:29 GMT
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Archive-number: 1545

NEW AIDS SUPPORT GROUP IN MELBOURNE

[Reproduced with permission from Melbourne Star Observer #110, Friday 1  
December 1989, (C) 1989 Melbourne Star Observer. All Rights Reserved.]

A new Area Group of the VAC (Victorian AIDS Council) Support Program has been  
created in response to the increase in the numbers of people with AIDS  
requiring care in the Kew, Richmond and Hawthorn area.

To be called Inner East, the new Area Group will join the East, South, Inner  
South, West and North (divided into "Yin" and "Yang") Area Groups as the  
organisational framework for the 80 care teams now operating throughout  
suburban Melbourne.

Care Teams comprising a small number of volunteers take responsibility for home  
care, housework, transport, shopping and other household tasks for a person  
with AIDS. Each Care Team is co-ordinated and resourced by its local Area  
Group.

Convenor of the Support Program, David Pullen, Told MSO that the growth in the  
East Group had made setting up Inner East necessary.

"There are now about 20 cases and 100 volunteers in East," he said.   
"Resourcing and management becomes a problem with a group that size. For  
example, the group is now too big to find good venues in which to meet."

He said that peer support, communication and training of volunteers was also  
suffering as a result of the size of the group.

Pullen foreshadowed that further new Area Groups would be needed at some stage  
for other areas of Melbourne, leading to a possible doubling in the total  
number of Area Groups over the next few years.

He said that there was still a serious shortfall between the number of care  
teams needed and the number of volunteers available.

"In 1989 we've come the closest we've ever come to not being able to provide  
care teams. Some people have had to be delayed. Friends of care team members  
have had to be dragged in, and some inappropriate things have happened," he  
said.

Expansion of the Support Program was the biggest issue on the agenda for the  
New Year, said Pullen. A recruitment campaign for new Support volunteers is to  
be launched within the next few months.

"We have to find out why some people are not getting involved."

He said that he believed there were widespread misconceptions in the gay  
community about what was needed to become a volunteer.

"We are not looking for doctors or nurses, but ordinary everyday people.   
People can develope the skills to do something for friends with AIDS.  It's one  
of the few concrete, practical things that can be done about AIDS."

A new Statement of Understanding has been drafted and will form part of the  
application process for members of the Support Program.

The Statement requires that volunteers respect the rights to confidentiality  
and independence of people with AIDS, that volunteers be non-judgemental of the  
person's beliefs, be reliable, communicative and co-operative with other  
volunteers and that they undertake appropriate Support Program training.

Pullen said that there was nothing substantially new in the Statement.   
Previously, Support volunteers had been required to sign a Statement of  
Purpose. "This just spells it out a little more clearly," he said.

--  
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