Barbara Spriggs, the widow of Oakden victim Bob, hails release of aged-care royal commission

Barbara Spriggs was exhausted seeking justice for her husband Bob. It took a random encounter at the shops to resume the fight that led to the aged-care report.

Barbara Spriggs, whose dogged pursuit of justice for her late husband, Bob, helped spur the aged-care royal commission, says the release of the 148 recommendations on Monday is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the nation.

“I think it’s an exciting day that Australia should be proud of,” she said of the chance to fix aged care.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” added her son, Clive. “But the foundations are there, the blueprint is there.”

And it might never have happened at all without Mrs Spriggs, whose efforts in 2016 to find out what happened to Mr Spriggs at the Oakden mental health nursing home in Adelaide led to several inquiries and eventually helped drive the establishment of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

Yet the grieving widow almost gave up, frustrated and worn out trying to find why Mr Spriggs, who had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, had deteriorated so suddenly after good care at the Repat hospital. He later died.

Barb Spriggs and her son Clive hold a portrait of her husband Bob after the release of the Aged Care Royal Commission report. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Bob Spriggs had bruises, received 10 times the required dose of an antipsychotic drug, and was dehydrated and suffering pneumonia before he was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Picture: Brenton Edwards

“I wasn’t getting anywhere,” she recalled. And then one day while shopping in Spotlight, she met a nurse from the Repat who asked how she was going.

The nurse said the staff still talked about Mr Spriggs and how what happened to him had been disgraceful.

“I said ‘I‘ve put in a complaint about it but I’m not getting very far’, “ Mrs Spriggs told her.

“And she started crying. And she said, ‘You need to keep fighting for it’.

“So I got in the car and I thought, ‘You know, I have to keep going’.”

When, after six months, Mrs Spriggs and Clive started to win support from within the aged-care system, and later strong media reporting, Mr Spriggs became part of a rallying cry for community concern about aged care.

He had bruises, received 10 times the required dose of an antipsychotic drug, and was dehydrated and suffering pneumonia before he was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Mrs Spriggs and her son were the two first witnesses in 2019 to the royal commission. To this day, she says she does not know what happened to her husband at Oakden. But she now knows the commissioners listened.

Her call for easier complaint reporting, and registration and proper training of staff, have been echoed in their report, which urges a new Complaints Commissioner and minimum qualifications for staff who should also be registered.