Eungella’s fight to fix dismal aged care services

A retired doctor fed up with seeing older people suffer and forced to hitchhike for medical care has taken on an ‘extraordinary fight’ to fix the situation.

A frustrated former doctor is overhauling the aged care service in her community that she says has stagnated for decades.

Eungella retiree Beryl Turner said older people in the mountaintop town were suffering with aged care providers unwilling to travel more than 90 minutes from Mackay.

She said residents were having to drive into Mackay several times a week to get dressings changed with one man without a car forced to hitchhike for the vital service.

“It’s just terrible,” the Eungella Community Development Association president said.

Ms Turner said she teamed up with Finch Hatton resident and nurse consultant aged care specialist Sue Vetma to take on an “extraordinary fight” to rectify the situation.

The ECDA ran a survey identifying about 30 Eungella residents who were eligible for a Home Care Package which in turn provided a business case presented to Mackay-based service providers.

“We have enough aged people up here to make it worthwhile for a service provider to start providing services (in Eungella) provided they employ people here,” Ms Turner said.

“(It’s) providing cleaners to come into people’s houses, providing nurses to go and help them with dressings or help them have a shower, yard people to do the mowing or trim trees.”

Ms Turner said they estimated there was enough work to employ two aged care workers full time with a Mackay provider currently considering the proposition.

She added the survey had already produced positive changes with a stair lift installed for a resident “struggling and in danger of falling”.

It comes on the back of the ECDA successfully lobbying Meals on Wheels to extend its delivery service to Eungella.

“They cook (the meals) in (Mackay), freeze them and they have volunteers who drive them up here Tuesday morning,” Ms Turner said, with residents able to collect them at the hall along North Street.

Ms Turner is now directing her focus to getting palliative and end-of-life care and other nursing services to attend Eungella and will meet with the Mackay Hospital and Health Service on Wednesday.

“We’re always sad when one of our old people has to leave because they can’t get the services, they end up in an old people’s home,” she said.

“They find themselves living in Mackay in the heat without their friends and that’s where they die.”

This story was thanks to the My Town series, a Daily Mercury and Mackay Regional Council initiative.