Travel made possible with Juniper Home Care

With support from Juniper’s Home Care team, customer Owen Carpenter will soon be jetting off to Singapore. It is a trip that, not long ago, Owen wasn’t sure he’d be able to take.

Owen has been a Juniper Home Care customer for close to three years, receiving occupational therapy and fortnightly social support outings that have helped him stay connected to the life he loves.

This November, thanks to a powered travel wheelchair sourced by his Juniper occupational therapist, he and his wife Averil will travel to Singapore and then on to Penang, where Avril has always dreamed of staying at a boutique hotel called The Blue Mansion.

“It was only when we got the chair that we confirmed we could do Singapore,” he said. “Having a wheelchair has really made going places so much better.”

After suffering two strokes, Owen lost strength and mobility on his left side, along with the fine motor skills. Getting out and about, let alone planning a trip overseas, felt well out of reach.

Before the strokes, Owen had built a meaningful and creative life. He began as a cabinet maker, before landing a job at the ABC during their transition from black and white to colour, eventually becoming senior editor at Channel 9 after about 15 years there.

He then went on to teach media at Shenton College for more than 20 years, retiring in 2016.

Away from work, Owen kept himself busy with a range of creative pursuits.

“I’m a member of the Showgrounds Community Men’s Shed. I was a member before I had the stroke, and I used to do woodwork and ceramics there,” he said. “Because of the stroke, I’ve lost fine motor skills. My left side is affected and my left leg doesn’t work as well as it could.”

After the strokes, a lot of what Owen had loved doing was no longer possible. But Owen’s connection to the things he loves has never gone away, and Juniper’s Home Care services have played a significant role in keeping it alive.

Through Juniper, Owen receives occupational therapy, fortnightly social support outings and domestic assistance.

Owen understands better than most what quality home care means for older Australians.

“It’s wonderful. You spend your working life acquiring certain things, and the big thing is the house. To have to leave the house and all the other things you’ve acquired to go into residential care would be hard. I don’t like being treated as a patient.”

Central to Owen’s renewed independence has been his occupational therapist, who helped him find a powered travel wheelchair weighing just 13 kilograms, a fraction of the 52-kilogram chair he had been using previously.

When they were trialling it, the occupational therapist  took him out to a set of traffic lights and had him navigate all four corners of an intersection to make sure he was comfortable with how it handled.

Once Owen got comfortable in the chair, familiar places like Bunnings became a completely different experience.

“In previous visits I had to be on a walker, and Bunnings is a big place, you start to realise how big it is,” he said. “My carer could push the trolley, and I could zoom around and find everything I wanted to purchase. The wheelchair just makes doing things so much more viable.”

The new chair has also given Owen a newfound confidence on public transport. “It’s great that all the buses have ramps. On the train, they’ve got an area just inside the door that’s made for wheelchairs. Anyone sitting in those seats will get up for you, once you get confident, it’s a really good option.”

Averil has dreamed of staying at The Blue Mansion in Penang, and with the travel wheelchair now part of their lives, that dream is finally within reach. For Owen, the trip is  about far more than a holiday, it is about showing up for the person who has shown up for him.

“When you have a stroke, the people around you can either turf you out or readjust their life to look after someone with a disability. I’ve been lucky that Averil has accepted that. I’m glad that with the wheelchair, it has now made it possible that I can be part of fulfilling Avril’s desire to stay at The Blue Mansion, and not be too much of an inconvenience.”

Looking beyond November, Averil has been talking about Kalbarri and Esperance, road trips that now feel possible. “Because the wheelchair is light enough that my wife can handle it into the back of a car and out, it really opens up everything,” Owen said.

For Owen, the quality of Juniper’s staff is what has made the biggest impression on him.

“All the people we’ve met from Juniper are very, very nice people. We’ve never had a carer or staff member who hasn’t been respectful and treated me with dignity.”