ECHO communication hotline

On 24 August the Australian Health Department released findings of an independent review into the COVID-19 outbreak at Newmarch House.

The review was commissioned by the Department to understand what occurred and what could be learned from the experience. The review was undertaken by Professor Lyn Gilbert and Adjunct Professor Alan Lilly.

Thankfully, there are many differences between the situation which occured at Newmarch House, a residential care facility, in NSW, in April this year, and the current situation at ECHO.

However, ECHO is committed to continuous improvement and doing everything in our power to keep our people safe, so we have been conducting our own review of the findings from the Newmarch House outbreak, to see if there are any lessons we can learn and apply, to improve our COVID protections.

One of the key findings from the Newmarch review was a need for better communication with clients and their families, during the outbreak. In response to this, ECHO has established a special email address for emergency communication.

If it’s an emergency and you need urgent communication or a status update on a loved one, you can use the email address: hotline@echocommunity.org.au or you can still call the main office number on 9271 7011.

Please only use this email address for emergencies or urgent enquiries. All non-urgent enquiries will be dealt with in the normal way. In general, if you send us an email or leave a message for someone to call you back, you can expect a response within 24 hours. In some cases, if the person you’re trying to reach is out helping other clients, or only works part-time, it might take up to 48 hours for them to call you back.