Thursday January 27, 2022
Dear Prime Minister,
Change is needed: a warning from COVID’s ground zero in aged care
I write to you because we are fast approaching the two-year anniversary since the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in the aged care sector and, heartbreakingly, it feels as if we are no closer to managing this crisis.
As a not-for-profit provider, BaptistCare exists to serve our community and protect the vulnerable older people in our care. Our teams have been valiantly fighting the pandemic on multiple fronts for two years, but we are exhausted, and we are fast losing ground. If COVID-19 is in our community, it is in our aged care system. At this moment, hundreds of aged care homes and thousands of residents are locked down due to exposures and outbreaks.
This means that, again, our residents have been isolated in their rooms or restricted to smaller areas of the home for weeks on end without family, without the social interaction and physical activity so essential to their well-being. It means our staff have cancelled holiday plans for yet another year and are working long hours, in full PPE, with the leanest of teams and carrying all the heightened emotional and practical pressures that come with that.
In a press conference you suggested the solution was to simply “push through” and “manage the demands in aged care facilities as best we can”.
On this point we cannot stay silent. How long can we rely on the resilience and fortitude of the exceptional people working on the frontlines of aged care without proper process, resources and recognition?
The simple truth is that we cannot maintain the standard of care our community expects if the situation continues and all we do is “push through”.
New battle lines must be drawn or Australian aged care risks defeat in the battle against COVID.
There are two fundamental things that need to change.
First, we need a new playbook to manage the crisis — traditional infection control is no longer a viable strategy.
The government and regulators need to introduce guidance and settings to support living with COVID.
Endlessly isolating residents in their rooms and preventing visits from friends and family is not sustainable. But under the current health advice, this is what we must do. In one situation, residents have been forced to keep to their rooms for more than 21 days.
Aged care residents who are vaccinated deserve the dignity of choice around their mobility — just like we have in the broader community. And family members are a critical partner in our care model — we cannot simply remove them from the equation without serious consequences.
Second, frontline aged care workers must receive fair and competitive compensation for the critical work they do.
One of the biggest challenges we face today was a problem long before the pandemic arrived on Australian shores and it will continue to be a problem unless it is addressed.
The sector is critically underfunded, the workforce is significantly underpaid for the value of their work, and staff shortages have only been accelerated by the Omicron variant. We are exploring every avenue to help shore up our teams and we are so incredibly grateful to the aged care workers who continue to show up every day and are working incredibly long hours, exhausted, to care for others.
However, with the ongoing pressure of the pandemic and without increasing award wages and improving the remuneration of aged care workers, we will continue to lose valuable people and experience.
We can hardly expect workers to stay in aged care when their qualifications and experience will earn them more money in hospitals or in disability care.
I write to you today because we cannot keep “pushing through”. We need change from the top and we need support from our communities to ensure Australia’s vulnerable and elderly receive the standard of care and services they deserve and expect.
We are all getting older and we should be able to trust that there is a system that allows us to age in comfort and with dignity, wherever we live and whatever the challenges of the day.
We ask that through your leadership of our nation you ensure the aged care sector has the appropriate resources to push through this wave, and beyond. We also ask that your government and health experts ensure that plans and guidance for managing the pandemic in the aged care setting remain fit for purpose as the situation evolves.
The aged care royal commission called out fundamental systemic flaws which have not been addressed, but in fact have been allowed to grow and fester in this pandemic.
Please consider the strain the system is under and the continued contribution of those hard-working individuals on the frontline.
We can only “push through” for so long.
Yours sincerely,
Charles Moore, chief executive officer, BaptistCare NSW & ACT
If one were cynical enough one might draw the conclusion that the strategy by the Government is to kill of a number of elderly to reduce the financial burden upon the Government.
This article is extremely accurate in a polite manner. There are those in society that think “I’m OK and will survive and let it rip.” As a consequence my son in law’s father contacted COVID from non mask wearing “I’m OK” younger ones and has become a statistic.
The nursing homes at a little different. My father in law was isolated due to shutdowns. His life rotated around an afternoon at the bowls club with two beers and his mates and a once a week dinner with myself at the surf club. In both places he was well known at 94 and pampered to by staff and patrons. Surprisingly many Australians respect and interrelate with the elderly in a typical Aussie way.
He quietly said on a number of occasions during the varying lockdown periods “We are the only two left.” He had lost that social interaction because of the lock downs. Stopped eating and passed away in a week.
Many elderly are in the same boat, feeling isolated, lonely and believe they have no reason to go on.
Staff are exceptional but they cannot replace traditional frienships and habits.
Politicians simply refuse to face reality. Just apply a bit mor spin.
I am crying as I read.
Well said. But you do realise that this will go straight over the head of the Liar from the Shire. You are asking hime to provide leadership, something his is utterly incapable of. And you give him no glib way to make doing the politically necessary and right thing a political winner. Aged Care does not donate like fossil fuel, gambling and banking and finance and is, therefore invisible to this incompetent government. The only hope for aged care is that this mob of idiots is humiliated at the election.
As much as I agree with what you say, I do fear that even if there’s a change of government, nothing much will change in this sector. The ALP seems to have lost any of its one-time vision and determination to help the less privileged. Prove me wrong Albo.
Been Around’s solution is the only immediate solution. Aged Care / Disability has been under a national spotlight for decades. To no avail. Words on words on words have been employed. To no avail. Having been a CEO, Consultant to Aged Care / Disability for many of those decades my shared distress with Charles Moore heartfelt. Am now 84. Regularly, around Australia, I hear and share horrendous stories. The trend of abuse, impossibilities confronting Service Providers, broken, distressed staff and families continue. It is not like we don’t understand what and why. And how, to fix, repair and normalise care of aged / disabled. We do! The Federal Govt of Australia is the responsible authority? And this Morrison Govt does know too! Vote them out . . . or turn your head away.
All politicians in government should reflect that one day it is likely to be them huddled in their solitary room, wasting away the remaining days & hoping that an edible meal is delivered with a smile…& by someone who gives a stuff.
It would be no surprise if Morrison has a spreadsheet which shows not a sufficient number of aged care residents are Coalition voters in marginal electorates.
It will never be them. They have enough money in their pensions and post parliament sinecures to buy and sell us, or in samoe cases one suspect the aged care home.
What can one say but it seems that anyone who seems to be a burden on the government finances they are not interested in and it has been this way for a long time, it seems that and one who receives any government benefit is just that a burden on the taxpayers no matter what even though they still pay taxes just like every one else but they can reduce taxes and seem to give benefits to corporations, we all know were their priority lies.
Just imagine Smirko being your birth partner, ewerk! (I won’t/ don’t want to, but, as he has used the well know analogy, bear with me)!
Using familiar terms such as “Can do capitalism” blah blah blah has very grave risks when used in another setting.
“Push through” is the mantra for the vaginal birth at all cost movement so beloved of the NHS in the UK and the public system in Australia. Led by midwives who have never had to repair ( as they are not qualified to do so) the torn apart or completely shattered pelvic floors.
These under reported and often dismissed birthing injuries leave women wearing the adult form of a nappy 24 hours a day. They are unable to exercise and, yet, they silently cope with the damage. If they complain they are usually treated as “failures” of the vaginal birthing movement.
The gynaecologist they see, eventually, if they are in the Australian public system and in the UK’s NHS, possibly in their next lives, does that, with the “fast disappearing mesh” operations.
After they have undergone years of pelvic floor exercises with physiotherapists who don’t understand that if the muscle has been torn from the front of the pelvis, no amount of contracting the unattached muscle is going to work..
The “pushing through” the pain analogy is meant to be used only in the last stages of 2nd stage labour, NOT, in the midst of a pandemic which is dragging on and on with 2 years in and counting.
Why are the politicians so busy overriding health advice for “the sake of the economy”, claiming the don’t have the political capital to do more to reduce spread. While making the entire situation more and more difficult and dangerous.
Economy, what economy?? This rubbish is meant to be reassuring us that “All will be well, when we get to the other side”.
Until we bring this pandemic under control the economic recovery will not be happening anytime soon.
The NSW Dom premier didn’t even stop to think, before he held a Covid19 party from the 15th of December and sparked this infection Tsunami. The health teams of Australia would like to wish you a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year because they most certainly didn’t have one and neither did their families.
The aged care sector has been the poverty struck segment of the health system and the treatment of these aged people has been appalling from the Newmarch house “hospital in the home” to the 800 or so deaths in the federally funded and supervised private aged care establishments in Victoria which contrasted with the zero deaths in the state run and supervised aged care facilities.
The “lock outs” for relatives from aged care facilities is part of the problem and also part of Smirko’s mantra of “Pushing through the pain” knowing that your mother, father, great uncle or friend is isolated, losing the last gays of their lives lonely and locked down.
What is wrong with fully vaccinated relatives donning PPE to join their relatives and providing the one on one care that they have done in the past?
As a member of the health team, I know where I would like to push all the nonsense that I have heard from the laziest man to have ever squatted in Kirribilli House and lets see if he wants to “Push through” the pain involved with his left nostril.