FAITH has also assisted families travel from Victoria and Queensland to participate in kidney transplants in Western Australia.
This project has recently been awarded the Australian Housing Institute’s Excellence in Delivering Support Solutions Award (WA) and recognised the contribution social housing of this type makes to strengthening communities and improving the quality of people’s lives.
Thanks to our generous supporters this accommodation has been provided at no cost to these families. We are currently working towards providing FAITH accommodation in all Australian states.
How the FAITH Housing Project began
In 2006, the Department of Housing and Works (WA) purchased two properties for living donor rural families in the Perth suburb of Morley. A partnership agreement between Kidney Health Australia and Foundation Housing WA has been established, and LotteryWest provided a generous grant for a complete fit-out of the houses. The extensive fit-out means that rural patients who travel by the Royal Flying Doctor Service or car need only bring their suitcases.
The properties, Haywood and Hutchison Houses, are named after Perth nephrologists associated with living donation in WA for 26 years. The close proximity of the houses gives the opportunity for rural families in similar situations to support each other. Kidney Health Australia’s extensive volunteer network will also be a support for these families.
With the costs involved in living kidney donation, families often incur financial strain due to bills, lost income from time off work and accommodation and travel costs. Due to an inadequate supply of organs from deceased donors and the long waiting lists for a kidney, live donation is increasingly becoming a necessity.
Prior to FAITH, WA rural families had no affordable furnished accommodation options in Perth for the duration of the transplant operation and after-transplant follow-up (which can be up to three months).
Why FAITH?
Transplants are critical to the survival of countless kidney disease sufferers. The average wait for a transplant is 4 years, this wait has led to an increase in living donations which is where a healthy person willingly submits to having a kidney removed and implanted into another person with irreversible kidney disease.
Kidney transplants are only undertaken in city based hospitals which means rural and regional families have no choice but to travel to the city for the operation and follow up treatment. While this may sound simple enough, experiences of families tell a very different story with overwhelming emotional and financial strain. One transplant patient reported how he had to travel for 8 hours by bus into the city each time he needed treatment and was forced to hang around the hospital corridors before catching the next bus back as the cost of accommodation was simply too high.