Aged Care Insite Issue 98 | December-January 2017 | Page 12

industry & policy Consider childcare as an asset A Looking for a little synergy between your clients – and in your portfolio? Adding youth services can do the job. Alexandra Davis interviewed by Dallas Bastian ged-care providers interested in adding to their portfolio of businesses should consider investing in childcare, opening the door for residents and children to interact. Alexandra Davis, chief executive of Holy Family Services, provided this insight while speaking about diversifying aged-care businesses at the LASA National Congress 2016. Holy Family Services’ offerings include a residential aged-care facility, a 39-place childcare service, retirement living and a registered training organisation offering accredited and endorsed courses to the aged-care industry. Davis said adding childcare to the business, besides acting as an additional income stream, also creates opportunities for residents to socialise with young children and gives staff an option for childcare that’s close to where they work. Aged Care Insite sits down with Davis to discuss the challenges and opportunities that arise for aged-care organisations when venturing into childcare and education and training. ACI: Holy Family Services provides aged care, retirement living, childcare, and education and training. You encourage providers interested in diversifying their business to consider childcare. Why is this a good idea? AD: Childcare provides a number of benefits for aged-care providers. Firstly, it’s an additional income 10 agedcareinsite.com.au stream, and therefore, as we know, the cuts and the changes to the [Aged Care Funding Instrument] ACFI at this stage are putting pressure on much of the industry and aged care. Childcare is synergistic with aged care, with the accreditation processes that they have to undergo. Therefore you can easily add it to your portfolio of businesses. The children can then be involved with the residents. They can come into the aged care facility and spend time with the residents. We have specific programs that we run for both the residents and the children. The children have [part of] their ongoing education in the way that they spend time with the residents. It forms part of the children’s program, I guess. It’s quite a good way to augment your services if you are looking for something that adds value. It benefits our staff, too, because they have somewhere to put their children if they are working in our facility. It’s often difficult to get childcare that’s close to your work. What challenges arise from connecting childcare to aged care, and in particular from connecting the people in those facilities? The biggest challenge would be that they are working under different acc reditation systems and while they are synergistic, each has to comply with government legislation in a slightly different way. That is just something we have to work through, I guess. It is a challenge, but it’s not insurmountable.