Success Story
Resthaven gives clients and families more choice and control with Family Portal
Industry
Aged Care
Founded
1935
Location
South Australia
Employees
3000
About Resthaven
Resthaven, one of South Australia’s largest not-for-profit aged care providers, has spent over 90 years delivering compassionate care across residential, retirement, respite, and community services. Like many providers, their community services team faced communication challenges. Families wanted clearer visibility into schedules and faster updates when things changed.
Existing users of AlayaCare, the team introduced the Family Portal feature to give clients and families instant access to schedules and progress notes.
Interview with
Gillian McGinty
Business Manager, Community Service, Resthaven
Paul Rowley
Project Manager at Resthaven
The Challenge
Before the Family Portal, Resthaven relied on a paper-based system for schedules and care plans. Staff printed out and delivered weekly schedules. But by the time clients and families received them, details had often changed.
Gillian McGinty, Business Manager, Community Services, explains, “Care plans were stored in folders at our client’s homes. Every time a care plan was updated, we had to remove and replace it.”
Staff also struggled to contact families during office hours because many were out working or busy with daily life. Multiple phone calls were required just to relay schedule changes or updates. This caused frustration for families and staff. Communication and scheduling consistently topped the complaint list.
The challenge was clear. Families needed timely, reliable access to information and staff needed a solution that reduced repetitive work.
The Solution
Already AlayaCare users, the team identified Family Portal as a natural fit for Resthaven.
Paul Rowley, Project Manager, explains, “We’d already worked extensively with AlayaCare and knew the partnership worked. With the portal constantly improving, the choice was easy.”
Resthaven’s Family Portal lets families view schedules and progress notes online, cutting phone calls and removing the need for printed updates.
The rollout was deliberate and thorough. Resthaven ran a two-month pilot across multiple sites, carefully testing with a mix of tech-savvy and less confident users and gathering feedback to refine the approach.
“We like to do things properly,” says Paul. “We trained our managers and developed work instructions for both staff and clients. The portal itself is simple to use but we wanted to make sure adoption was smooth across the board.”
The pilot went so well that when it ended briefly, families who had access were reluctant to let it go.
“They were devastated when we paused the portal after the pilot,” laughs Gillian. “They’d become so used to checking schedules and notes that going back to phone calls felt like a big step backward.”
The Result
The Family Portal has totally transformed communication within Resthaven’s Community Services.
Clients and families now have more control over their information, cutting back-and-forth calls and making daily communication far smoother. They can view schedules and progress notes in real time, freeing staff to focus on care.
“We rang a family recently about a care update, and they said, ‘Yes, I’ve already seen that in the notes,’” says Gillian. “That’s the transparency we wanted.”
The Family Portal has also saved staff huge amounts of time. One site reclaimed a full day of work previously spent printing and distributing schedules, letting coordinators focus on planning and client care.
“It’s made staff more productive,” says Gillian. “They can focus on scheduling and supporting clients instead of being stuck on the phone.”
Since introducing the Family Portal, complaints about consultation and communication — previously the most common issues — have dropped by 50%. This reflects both the increased control clients and families have over their information and the improved productivity of staff.
“The biggest impact is clients having more control over their information and visibility of their schedules,” says Gillian. “We definitely recommend the Family Portal. There are other options, but we love that it’s built within AlayaCare and constantly improving.”
Need help with family communication?
Interested in how Family Portal can help your organisation? Get in touch with our friendly team today.