The ugly submission - explained

The curious one in Perth (hiya Maureen ;)) has asked what the submission was all about... It's not really that exciting, but I should probably fill in the gaps.

I work for an Aged Care Hostel. Our residents are people with low care needs who have their own rooms and have meals in a communal dining room. They can all get around on their own (sometimes with frames or walking sticks etc) but might need some assistance with showering and medications. I don't do any hand's on stuff, I work in the office and make sure that what we do meets the requirements of the government and industry bodies.

That's where the submission comes in. We are accreditated by the government and must renew our accreditation every three years. Ours runs out in March and therefore we had to submit our application stating what we do to meet our objectives and our results. This ugly document turned out to be just over 100 pages, 80% of which I wrote. The interesting part is that aged care is not my forte and so I did a pretty good job of making it up as I went along. Now we have the next 2 months to make sure that we continue to do what we've said before they turn up on our doorstep to go through our files with a fine tooth comb looking for ways to catch us out (oops - do I sound negative here???). Not that they will, 'cause I'll have everything top-notch by that point!!!

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy working here, just don't enjoy the audit process. I like to be able to go downstairs at morning and afternoon tea and sit with some of the residents and have a chat. There are a few who are interested in seeing my artwork and frequently ask about it (which is good as I have them to push me along when I'm not getting anywhere). That side of it is good. What is not is the fact that this is eating into time that I want to spend creating and getting "Artstitches the business" happening.