An honour for Ohana
IT may be more than a month after Australia Day, but the list of community honorees keeps on growing.
Last week, The AJN learnt that our list of 2013 award recipients wasn’t complete. We’d missed Judith Ohana who received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to aged care.
The Sydney resident had been managing the LinkAGE program – which provides volunteer companions to elderly residents in hostels, nursing homes and retirement villages – for five years when St John Ambulance decided to close it in 2006.
So Ohana decided to save the program. “By then I had grown the program to about 60 volunteers visiting in 35 aged-care facilities,” she said.
“The volunteers were very, very distressed because they’d all been visiting an elderly person in an aged-care facility and they’d formed a very strong relationship.
“Their commitment inspired me to go out and try find a benefactor and a new home for the program, and so that is what I did.”
Once Ohana found a benefactor she moved the program’s base to the Mater Hospital in Crows Nest, NSW.
“Every single one of those 60 volunteers agreed to transfer across to the Mater Hospital with the program,” she said. “It’s been running very successfully there ever since, for the last seven years or so, and its future is assured with the funding from the benefactor.”
All in all, Ohana spent around 10 years managing the program, growing it from 20 volunteers in 2001 to 100 by the time she retired in May 2011 to spend more time with her granddaughter.
She said receiving the OAM was “a real thrill”, adding that it was wonderful to make a “real difference to the final journey that many older people take”.
“And on the other side the volunteers were all absolutely amazing people,” she said.
In addition to her work in aged care, Ohana has also been involved in various other community activities, such as setting up community kindergartens, and was also heavily involved in the campaign to mitigate the environmental impacts of Sydney Airport’s expansion.
GARETH NARUNSKY
Judith Ohana and husband Joseph.
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