Bendigo Community Health Services is home to more than 50 services and 250 staff. Take a journey through our organisation to learn more about our services and programs by meeting some of our wonderful staff through our blog Discovering BCHS…

WHEN Anne-Marie Kelly started her health sciences degree, she had no idea what career she wanted to follow but thought the course might lead on to an allied speciality like podiatry.

Instead, it led her straight to Bendigo Community Health Services and a role in organisational development that has seen her work benefit thousands of people across Victoria.

“I did my final placement here with the BCHS planning, development and quality team, which is now organisational development,” the 23-year-old explains.

“I was given the RUOK? Day event to run internally, surveys to put in, evaluations to check and videos to make - a whole range of things.

“And I realised the opportunities that could come from working in health. All the different things I was exposed to on placement solidified why BCHS would be a great place to work.”

Anne-Marie joined the team permanently in December 2013 and she has been busy juggling ventures covering development, education, quality and general function ever since.

She is organisational development leader for the Community Connections project focusing on dementia and says her work in that field has opened her eyes in many ways.

“Our aim is for BCHS to become a dementia-friendly organisation,” she explains. “So we’ve gone out and spoken to community groups, families and services asking what we need to know and do to make our own services more dementia friendly.

“That information is used to create a dementia capacity-building package and we have made little i-stories to help people understand the different experiences.

“We filmed four different community members: one from the perspective of early diagnosis; a recently diagnosed person still in care with their partner; someone who recently lost someone to dementia; and someone who recently put their loved one in care.”

The package will be launched around Dementia Month, offering practical tips that can improve how BCHS caters for sufferers and their loved ones.

“My experience has given me a greater understanding of what’s actually going on in our community,” says Anne-Marie, who is a keen netballer for Bridgewater in her spare time.

“You can have a surface understanding, but once you get out and have conversations with community members, you find out a lot more than you expected and you realise why it’s so important to work in health and support the people who need our help.”

Based at the Central site, Anne-Marie has also helped create two innovative online platforms known as Learning Management Systems.

The first – Student Orientation Space – is designed for students doing placements with BCHS and other health-based organisations state-wide, as well as various educational institutions that are using some of its modules.

“SOS really sets the scene for placement students, especially first-years who have never been part of the health workforce before,” says Anne-Marie.

“It introduces them to complex themes like clinical governance they may have heard of, but not necessarily understood, and breaks it down into simpler form.

“Other modules include first aid, health and safety, cultural diversity and others, and students complete them before they start. At BCHS, they have to do two modules before orientation.”

Anne-Marie and the team were invited to present the system at the NET2014 international conference on networking in healthcare education at Cambridge University.

“That was very special – we met a lot of innovative people and had a really good reception to SOS and our little character called Bendi, who helps students navigate their way around it.”

The other web-based platform, Dual Tools, relates to the dual diagnosis of mental illness and dependence on alcohol and other drugs. It pulls together how organisations independently serving those fields can link and work together to get the best outcomes for their clients.

While it will be officially launched later this year, more than 20 organisations are already using Dual Tools. SOS has been adopted by thousands of users across Victoria.

Anne-Marie also assists with the Integrated Health Provider service review to ensure BCHS programs meet core competencies and standards required under funding guidelines.

She has also gone back to school, studying for a graduate certificate in commerce online.

Not bad for the girl who started out with only a vague idea of where her future career lay.

“After speaking to people for the Community Connections dementia project, meeting those who didn’t realise what services were available and seeing them referred into BCHS post our conversations, I knew we were doing great things and this is what I want to do – help people.

“Community health is so important because we take off our clinical hats and see clients as real people and see the range of things going on in their lives.

“We don’t just treat the sore foot - we have the chat, understand and get to know them. And that’s really important in making people feel valued.”