industry & reform
Force for good
Can we look forward to
much better post-COVID
residential aged care?
By Mike Rungie
The virus has certainly opened up
a tantalising debate for residential
aged care to stop locking people
away and do what it takes to maximise frail
lives. Not surprising when we look at how,
even in a time of extraordinary effort, the
virus has exposed that:
• people prefer not to live in residential
aged care homes
• life enhancing technologies, buildings,
supports and skills are seldom present
• they are not safe and infection safety is
achieved by locking residents away for
long periods
18 agedcareinsite.com.au
• they survived by subjecting poorly paid
and equipped staff to significant risk and
stress, and
• half of them weren’t viable even before
the virus.
So, what would ‘good’ residential
aged care look like? Leaders will need to
know this before they will shift from the
safe process of gradual improvement to
the rapid transformation we really need
right now.
For years we’ve asked residents
to comment on our plans for new
residential care, containing them to also
being gradual improvers. Then last year
Strathalbyn Aged Care asked residents and
the community what it was they wanted
to preserve or change if they became
frail. They said, ‘I’m not going to be easy
to care for, but just add discrete and
loving care in a place that lets me live my
current lifestyle. I don’t want to live in an
institution, but I do want community at
my doorstep. And don’t take away all that I
love, or destroy my reputation.’
We gave the Strathalbyn Aged Care
‘co-designed brief’ to architects and asked
what the building would look like. They
said they really needed to design it with
the client… hold onto your hats – they
meant the resident not the provider.
But they identified seven foundation
requirements to achieve the brief, none of
which are present in the current residential
care service model:
• a culture that doesn’t take away but
adds whatever it takes to maximise a
frail life by building resident skills and
reputation
• rooms being more like houses with easy
individual house access and function for
families and home deliveries, with the
whole development feeling more like
housing and less like a carpeted hospital
• accepting that both short and long-stay
residents and their families prefer more
private space, and that the demand for
“good” short-stay is about to escalate
• an extreme effort for the inclusion of
families and community to enhance joy,
care, and safeguard against abuse in ways
that inspections and reporting never can
• a concierge service that creates a single
point of contact for the resident, and
offers a very wide range of health, care
and lifestyle options … from both the
provider and external ‘best of breed’
suppliers