’Never again’ Australian Aged Care Quality Agency’s chief tells Oakden Senate inquiry

THE first public hearings into the Oakden nursing home scandal have been told of a toxic environment contributing to the long running abuse of dementia patients.

• Report finds minimal federal scrutiny of scandal-hit Oakden
• Oakden Senate inquiry: Families desperate for answers
• Oakden nursing home abuse and secrecy creates crisis in confidence
• Oakden ‘will never happen again’

A FORMER senior medical administrator at the Oakden nursing home says she was continually blocked from blowing the whistle on horrific practices at the facility and changing its “toxic culture”.

Sharon Olsson told a Senate inquiry into the abuse at Oakden that she was sent to the facility in 2007 after it had failed 26 of 44 Commonwealth health standards to “fix things”.

But she claims her team were “thwarted at every turn” when they tried to improve change things at Oakden — including incompetent nursing practices, “extraordinary” medication contamination and rapid weight loss of residents.

Ms Olsson said staff took their complaints to the then Health Rights Commissioner, but were informed the commissioner lacked the resources to investigate and they should “think about our own careers”.

She gave evidence alongside Neil and Carla Baron, independent advisers who were brought into Oakden to recommend reform. The pair quit in frustration after their advice was ignored, and told the Senate inquiry that Oakden should have been closed in 2008.

The facility was not closed until 2017, when Chief Psychiatrist Aaron Groves’ report lifted the lid on the culture of cover-up and abuse.

“The fact that someone like Barb Spriggs’ husband (former resident Bob Spriggs) and others had to go through that 10 years later is a failure and an indictment on both the State Government and the Commonwealth Government,” Mrs Baron said.

The trio quickly agreed with Liberal Senator Dean Smith’s assessment a “protection racket” had been able to develop at the facility, with Mr Baron saying it was a “good description”.

“Is there corruption in this? I believe there was. I believe this situation was a stinking mess of corruption,” he said.

“But what are they going to do about it? I don’t think the State Government is going to do anything about it and I don’t think the Federal Goverment is going to do anything about it.”

Ms Olsson said the culture of cover-up was at a senior level and left the facility after being unable to overhaul its culture and practices.

“We were thwarted at what seemed to be every turn … it was so demoralising we weren’t sleeping, our health was being affected,” she said.

The daughter of former Oakden resident Phillip Blakeley, Christina, told the inquiry her father lost weight rapidly and suffered unexplained bruising.

“He would cry. He had black eyes, he had bruised arms with fingers marks, he had butterfly bandaids,” Ms Blakeley said.

“When we kept asking what was going on they said well, this is how it is, he’s intruding on other people’s space. I mean seriously, where were the carers then? This shouldn’t have happened to him.”

Their evidence came as the Aged Care Quality Agency vowed facilities like Oakden with historic compliance issues would “never fall off our watch list again”.

ACQA chief executive Nick Ryan told the inquiry the “fundamental responsibility” for what happened at Oakden rested with the provider, but said there were “significant learnings” from what had occurred.

The facility’s Makk and McLeay wards passed all of a possible 44 standards during four subsequent audits — the most recent in February 2016 — after it was sanctioned for failing 26 standards in 2007.

“We certainly think we ought to have picked up in 2016 … risks and vulnerabilities in a complex service such as Makk and McLeay,” he said.

“We’ve never had a tick and flick approach … we’ve found noncompliance. We’re just sharper now on identifying noncompliance.”

Mr Ryan rejected Northern Adelaide Local Health Network chief executive Jackie Hanson’s evidence, who said the abuse could have been stopped years earlier if family members had been more involved in the audit process.

“I don’t believe the carers or the families of the people who lived at Oakden were given an opportunity to share their perceptions with the accreditors,” Ms Hanson said.

But Mr Ryan insisted 10 per cent of residents, or their families, were required to speak to auditors.