The Garrawarra Centre is a set of residential aged care cottages is on the Old Princes Hwy about 5km south of Waterfall. There are four residential cottages: Acacia, Banksia, Grevillea, and Waratah.
The Centre is one of the few purpose-built, dementia specific facilities in New South Wales that provides high level care for people with a primary diagnosis of dementia who exhibit challenging behaviours and cannot be accommodated in a main stream nursing home, and require a safe and secure environment.
For many years prior to Covid-19, our congregation had a small ministry team visit the Centre two days a month to provide a short church service to those residents who chose to join us. Regulars were Judy B, Warren W, Ian T and myself (Bruce H), backed up by such people as Jenni M, Genelle N and Karen R when they could make it. Warren played the keyboard, and Judy stepped in when he was unable to be there.
On one of the two days we’d spend half an hour in Acacia cottage and then Waratah cottage, and on the other day we would visit Grevillea and Banksia. Residents were invited to participate in a short service, and we gathered in the common lounge area and distributed songbooks. We sang lots of choruses and old hymns, such as “Trust and Obey”, “Amazing Grace”, “To God be the Glory”, and “What a friend we have in Jesus”. The singing was book-ended by a 20-second opening prayer and a benediction. In between it was punctuated by a Bible reading and (a little later) a three minute homily or reflection, and a prayer with some connection made to the reading.
In December, residents selected from the four cottages were gathered in the “Residents’ Lounge” in a different building for a Christmas service. We always conducted the same one, consisting of Bible readings interspersed with brackets of three Christmas carols, and concluding with an acting out of Mem Fox’s storybook “Wombat Divine” which makes the point that Christmas joy is for everyone, even someone who sleeps through it.
The lockdowns associated with Covid-19 caused extensive disruption to visitor arrangements across all aspects of local health districts, and particularly aged care facilities. We have only very recently returned.
This year, we conducted the Christmas service at 2:30pm on Monday 18 December 2023 (you can see some photos below), and in February we will resume monthly services one Monday afternoon each month in the Residents’ Lounge. That means we aren’t entering the cottages and so we don’t require the annual police checks which we had in the last few years before Covid.
If you would like to come along and join us, please email us on admin@engadine.unitingchurch.org.au.
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