Staff shortages have forced the closure of a not-for-profit aged care home in Lake Macquarie once all residents can be relocated.
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Southern Cross Care NSW and ACT has announced it will shut its Swansea Tenison home and its Currawarna facility in Bombala due to ongoing staffing shortages meaning the homes cannot continue to be run to the standard demanded by the provider.
"Our facilities are people's homes and we believe permanent, well-resourced staff are vital for fostering relationships and supporting people to age with dignity," Southern Cross Care NSW & ACT CEO Helen Emmerson said.
"As a registered nurse myself I know it's not sustainable to ask existing staff to regularly work double shifts, with no respite. Nor is it desirable to rely on impermanent casual staff who drive in and out.
"The decisions I and the board make must be solely in the interests of our residents. Sometimes those decisions are very hard and that's certainly been the case here. But we cannot responsibly continue to assign our limited resources to facilities we have assessed as unsustainable."
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Residents and families have been informed of the decision. Ms Emmerson said work to secure new accommodation for all affected residents had begun and the homes will not close until everyone is rehomed.
"We are arranging one-on-one meetings with every single resident and their families to ensure everyone has a dedicated point-of-contact to help them find suitable accommodation. That's our priority," she said.
Ms Emmerson said Swansea was was built in 1997 and intended as a low care hostel. But the needs of residents have grown increasingly complex and as the facility wasn't built to accommodate those needs, a "significant capital investment" would be needed to bring the home up to standard, she said.
However this wouldn't resolve the ongoing staffing pressures.
The Swansea workforce will be consolidated into Southern Cross Care's Caves Beach facility, which can also cater to the increasingly complex needs of residents.
The issue of staff shortages in aged care homes has reached a crisis point throughout the Omicron COVID-19 outbreak.
The Herald reported last month that Hunter aged care staff had been driven to tears trying to cope with an "avalanche" of COVID-19 infections that pushed up to 30 per cent of the workforce into isolation.
However the problem has been ongoing prior to the arrival of Omicron in Australia.
"Southern Cross Care runs 30 aged care homes across NSW and the ACT. We are experienced at operating in challenging circumstances. But the aged care sector faces serious structural and workforce issues, with most regional homes operating at a loss," Ms Emmerson said.
"Being a responsible aged care provider in this challenging environment means fronting up to difficult decisions to ensure a sustainable standard of quality care is maintained for our residents."
Shortland MP Pat Conroy pointed out there were currently 140,000 shifts going unfilled per week in aged care.
"Aged care is in a crisis, yet instead of doing his job, the Minister responsible Richard Colbeck went to the cricket for a few days before eventually stating that the sector is performing 'extremely well'," he said.
"It's approaching two weeks since they said it was sending in up to 1700 ADF personnel in to help address this crisis, but this morning we heard in Senate estimates that only 12 have been deployed so far in NSW.
"This crisis was building prior to COVID - over nearly a decade Scott Morrison has done nothing to improve the wages of aged care workers and nothing to increase staff levels."
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