Socialising from home

Ron Moulton is a socialite that loves his tennis, spending time in the garden and waving at all the cars going past his house.

“Food, friends and family” are the highlights of Ron’s week. 

He lives with his wife Joan in their home of more than 50 years and in recent years, Ron has scaled back his social life. Most of the time he only feels comfortable going out if Joan is with him. But social connections are so important to his well-being, so he needed some support to make connections in an environment where he was comfortable.

Using a Home Care Package, Ron accesses in-home respite two days a week, and likes to share a conversation with the Home Care Assistant who comes over to clean the house as well. It’s this support that gives Ron and Joan a good quality of life because it looks after their well-being and is key to their overall health.

As Joan said, “We're getting older all the time and it’s amazing that you can still live in a house like this.” 

Ron enjoys his respite visits because the support workers design activities around what he wants to do - often playing table tennis in the garage and going on outings for coffee or a walk.

Both Ron and Joan enjoy the fact that their respite support is delivered by people from different cultures, with different life experiences that they find so fascinating to talk about.

They have both had well-travelled lives.

 Born in Sydney, Ron was an engineer and with his wife at the time, Anne, moved to England and Canada. In Toronto, they met and became friends with Joan through a mutual connection. They moved back to Australia on the same boat as Joan was travelling on and Ron worked in Sydney for a while.

Ron and Anne had three children, and the family moved to South Australia so that Ron could work on the West Lakes project. When their eldest child was nearly 10, Anne passed away.

With the long-term friendship with Joan still strong, eventually she and Ron married in 1953. They had one daughter together to add to the family and now have eight grandchildren and one great grandchild.

Ron and Joan are fortunate to have a very involved family, with a son who visits to cook dinner regularly, another that mows the lawn, and a daughter with nursing qualifications who visits a few times a week. 

As they no longer drive, the couple also have friends who pick them up for church. But that doesn’t make Ron’s connections with his support workers any less important to his well-being. They’re the ones that allow him to keep living at home for as long as possible.

 For more information about how In-Home Respite could help you, call our friendly team on 1800 852 772.