Aged Care Insite Issue 114 | Oct-Nov 2019 | Page 20

industry & reform Can you run me through what you see as the Whiddon Way? The Whiddon Way actually a privilege. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to contribute to the royal commission and particularly in a constructive and positive way, the way that Whiddon were asked to, and what we were asked to present on. Is person-centred care viable in aged care? Chris Mamarelis interviewed by Conor Burke W hiddon is a large not-for‑profit organisation that operates residential aged care, community care and retirement living, with 19 facilities scattered throughout NSW and parts of Queensland. Whiddon has been a proponent of the person-centred care model since 2015. Its chief executive Chris Mamarelis was recently called to talk to the royal commission as one of the top 100 providers required to appear. Aged Care Insite spoke with Mamarelis shortly after his appearance. Below is an edited extract of the conversation. ACI: How did you find the whole royal commission experience? CM: The royal commission itself was a pretty good opportunity. I’ve said to a few people that when the dust settles and you look back, you realise that it’s 18 agedcareinsite.com.au That week focused on person-centred care. In 2015, Whiddon changed focus and rebranded three years later to reflect the shift to a person-centred approach. What spurred the change at that time? Interestingly, the commissioners asked me the same question there. As an organisation, we’d gone through some renewal back at that point in time with a management team and as an organisation. When that process occurs, you start looking at where your focus is and where your focus should be. So as any organisation does, we went through a strategic planning process and, working with the board, we really wanted to emphasise that as an organisation, central to everything we do are the people we care for. We built a framework, which at the top of that had a statement about enriching the people we care for. From that, we had to deliver and build a whole heap of initiatives and really reinvent ourselves as an organisation. From a care perspective and a resident- inclined perspective, that’s where this whole move to refining our approach to care – to have this positive impact we wanted to have – was born. Well, I guess there are three components of what has occurred. The Whiddon Way is really the cultural change that is required to support this shift and this approach to care and the approach to the person, the resident, the client that we are taking. And obviously, in order to have that positive impact, we have to empower the people within the organisation to do that. Culture is the most significant space that we have to have an impact on. So, we did a lot of work to influence cultural change, and the Whiddon Way is the way that we express ourselves and express our culture. At the heart of the Whiddon Way is nurturing relationships. And those relationships can be predominantly between our team members, employees and those that we care for, but they extend to the community, they extend to other stakeholders. And relationships are then central to the Whiddon Way, the way we function and the way we nurture our culture. The Whiddon Way is also about creating impact, and it’s about being progressive and innovative. It’s about, as an organisation, giving licence to our employees to go on this journey with MyLife, our model of care and relationship‑based care. And culturally, from the top down, we obviously have to be giving this licence to people if we’re going to facilitate this cultural shift. You use that word ‘culture’, and I think that throughout the royal commission we’ve seen that a lot of the instances of poor care are tied to poor culture among the workforce. But I think culture is a very top down thing. How did you personally implement culture change? Well, I couldn’t agree with you more that – the tone is set at the top, 100 per cent. And that’s from the board and as CEO, and then it filters through the organisation. I think we see that in good organisations and we see where problems arise. I said to the commissioners, in my role as CEO, I’m responsible for every resident that we care for in an aged care setting: every client in home care and every resident in a retirement village. The messaging and how we communicate through the organisation, again, if it’s about giving licence to the people, they have to hear it from the board and from the CEO that this is the