Unvaccinated aged care workers suspended from Strathalbyn and District Aged Care Facility, adding to staffing crisis

A South Australian aged care home is facing perilously low levels of staffing, after 10 employees were suspended for not meeting Covid vaccination deadlines.

Ten employees were suspended from a Strathalbyn aged care home following a statewide vaccination deadline for workers in the sector, after they failed to get the Covid-19 jab in time.

Staff levels at the government operated Strathalbyn and District Aged Care Facility are perilously low following the deadline-enforced suspensions, according to One Nation SA and former employees.

The fallout followed data revealed by The Advertiser on Friday, that detailed more than 95 per cent of the aged care workforce across the state had received their first Covid-19 jab by Friday’s deadline.

Up to 1300 aged care workers are now banned from working in the residential care sector after failing to meet the requirement.

The facade of Strathalbyn and District Aged Care Facility. Picture: Google

A Barossa Hills Fleurieu Local Health Network spokeswoman said as of Friday, 10 staff had not been vaccinated, four are booked in for vaccinations and two have medical exemptions.

“Additionally, we have had a small number of staff who have decided not to be vaccinated and therefore will no longer be able to work at the site,” the spokeswoman said.

They said 15 people have been offered a job at the site to cope with demand, and support was brought in from Mount Barker and Southern Fleurieu healthcare centres.

One Nation SA leader Jennifer Game said staff, families and residents were feeling the brunt of the vaccination enforcement.

“I’ve had a number of people contact me to express their concern for residents’ safety and their outrage at the treatment of South Australian aged care worker,” she said.

Figures released earlier in the week showed 95.2 per cent – about 25,000 – aged care workers had received at least one dose of a vaccine, and 77.5 per cent of the workforce is fully vaccinated.

A former staff member who wished not to be named and resigned before the deadline date, said conditions at the home were so poor that many employees would rather leave than be vaccinated for work.

“I think a lot of us would’ve actually thought about it if the conditions were better at the home, but the conditions were so bad, and then on top of that our moral ground, our choice was being taken away,” they said.

Staff at the home said the number of employees suspended over the lack of vaccine was less than half of those who had been suspended or taken leave over the past six months.

New management in the centre had led to staff taking stress leave, claims of workplace bullying and harassment and dangerously low resident to carer ratios, the former employee said.

Care ratios were below satisfactory levels, they said, and staff-to-resident numbers “got so bad on some shifts that there was one carer to 24 residents.”

“Definitely over 35 staff have left in the last six-months, four of them have been suspended with no information on what’s happened – two carers and two registered nurses,” they said.

The staff member said two staff have been on stress leave twice in the last six months.

Carolyn Meade, 60, of Strathalbyn, said she feels “scared” that her parent who lives at the home with dementia will not receive adequate care.

“It scares me because the staffing levels are so low and they can’t fill shifts … so you know, if they can’t feel shifts it means there’s danger to the residents and my mother’s one of them,” Ms Meade said.

She said her husband went to visit the home, to find one staff attempting to cater for 12 residents in the dementia wing.

Another staff member said they do want to go to work.

“I don’t want to go back and at this point I’m looking for a new job, it’s just not the same place it was,” the employee said.

“Elderly people need the continuity, and they just don’t know who’s coming in next.

“It’s the residents ultimately that are the ones impacted.”

Further creating issues for the home, on July 29 the home received a noncompliance notice for failing to meet several quality of care standards.

The failings included shortcomings in personal care, clinical care, services and support for daily living, human resources and organisational governance.

Strathalbyn and District Aged Care Facility were contacted for comment.