Shocking truth about what’s happened since Earle Haven

The Earle Haven scandal ripped families apart and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. But the story does not end there.

• Night the unthinkable happened
• Vital changes lost amid COVID fears

HEALTH and financial experts say more thanhalf of the lucrative aged care sector is on its knees and little has been learnt from the Earle Haven scandal that ripped families apart, claimed lives and cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Union bosses of frontline nurses say severe cuts are still being made to staff and services at homes and a study conducted in March revealed 600 of 1000 facilities across Australia are bleeding money.

This is despite the Federal Government tipping $66 billion into the sector since 2014, a $650,000 bailout in June to stop five Queensland nursing homes going bust and an additional $205 million to help boost staff numbers during the COVID crisis.

Supplied images from inside Earle Haven Retirement Village on July 11 2019, as residents were moved from the facility.

Three investigations and millions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent trying to expose the tragedy of the Earle Haven nursing home collapse, in which 69 vulnerable elderly were kicked out of home on the night of July 11, 2019.

Three people died in the following three months – one of whom had a fall the night of the evacuation – and long-held friendships were lost.

Investigations by the Aged Care Quality Safety Commission found 71 per cent of aged care patients were on psychotropic medication, and half had been physically restrained, before the collapse. Only one registered nurse was caring for the high-need residents on the night of the closure.

A year on from the scandal, it can be revealed:

* A wife of one of the patients was so concerned she contacted the Federal Government five months before the evacuation. Authorities eventually called her in November of that year, four months after the home had been shut and evacuated. She took a sandwich to her husband every day because she was worried about a lack of food.

* Doctors say they have never seen a worse “level of human distress” than on July 11, 2019 as they stood and watched vital equipment such as medication removed from the home.

* Ex-Earle Haven residents in care elsewhere still wait half an hour for help.

* No one has ever been charged over the scandal.

* Earle Haven high-care homes Hibiscus and Orchid houses remain dormant, but are up for lease.

* The global CEO of the subcontractor at Earle Haven has set up a new health company in the UK.

* A former Earle Haven nurse says no changes have been felt at the frontline despite multiple inquiries.

EARLE HAVEN HIGH CARE HOME LOSES FEDERAL ACCREDITATION

Beth Mohle, secretary, Queensland Nurses Union. Photo: Regi Varghese

Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union secretary Beth Mohle said not enough hurdles were in place to stop private providers shutting up shop in a manner similar to Earle Haven and slashing staff.

“You would like to hope the system has learnt something from Earle Haven, but I don’t see any fundamental systemic change in care,” she said.

“Even in the context of COVID-19 they have continued to cut jobs, at a time when you need more care.”

The union has called for greater transparency into the federal funding of private facilities. Under law, there is no requirement to publicly report how the funds are spent.

StewartBrown aged care consultant Grant Corderoy said while Earle Haven was a unique case given there was a third party care provider, he expected a number of struggling facilities to close in the “next two to three years”.

A former Earle Haven nurse who still works in aged care said every night elderly, high-need residents have to wait for help.

“The buzzers go constantly yet we are so desperately understaffed we simply cannot get

there straight away,’’ she said.

“The few staff rostered on for sometimes more than 90 high-care residents do their best. They work unpaid overtime to complete their rounds, but the conditions are deplorable.

“The aged care system in Australia has gone so far down the wrong path. They now blame

the staff if something goes wrong, not those in charge of providing enough staff.”

In a detailed response to this investigation, the State Government – heavily criticised by some families over its decision to remove residents at Earle Haven – said it had strengthened its evacuation planning following an inquiry by the Queensland Government health committee in September last year.

The Queensland Government supported all 12 recommendations made in the state review, but said it had no power to implement all of the recommendations since the regulation came under the purview of the Federal Government.

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Supplied images from inside Earle Haven Retirement Village, which show strewn files across the nursing home following a dispute between the care subcontractor and owner.

Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles said: “We’ve legislated nurse to patient and staff to patient ratios in our public residential aged care facilities.”

Councils on the Ageing (COTA) CEO Ian Yates believed many of the 23 recommendations to come from the Federal Government’s Carnell Inquiry into Earle Haven had either been enforced or were about to be.

“There is beefed up monitoring and consideration to give regulator more powers. Of course it requires a change to the Act which will come after the Royal Commission has reported,” he said.

The Royal commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety is expected to release findings in February 2021.

“Earle Haven was a unique circumstance, and I believe at a state level changes should be made to ensure it is a criminal offence for a subcontractor to abandon residents like they did, in such a deliberate way. But Queensland Police found no breach of the criminal law, no one has been charged, and that is a shame,” Mr Yates said.

Federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck said “significant progress” in implementing the 23 recommendations had been made, but did not specify which ones had been completed.

He said the regulator had been bolstered from January 1, 2020, and a free accounting service had been introduced.

The Department of Health has also developed a risk-based targeting tool to allow the regulator to better identify services at risk of failure, or where additional compliance activity might be warranted. The first phase of this capability was deployed in July and is currently in use by the Commission’s data scientists.

However, no changes to frontline employee wages, staff ratios or care hours had been implemented since Earle Haven’s closure.

77 YEAR-OLD SLEEPS ON ARMCHAIR AFTER LEAVING EARLE HAVEN FACILITY

Minister Aged Care Richard Colbeck said significant progress has been made on the recommendations made during the federal inquiry into Earle Haven. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

Mudgeeraba MP Ros Bates said despite the changes she was yet to receive a response to her calls for an investigation into the state’s 16 government-run facilities.

Gaven MP Meaghan Scanlon, who was at the facility on the night of the closure, said: “A systemic change is needed, more transparency in the system, minimum staffing levels. What happened at Earle Haven is proof we don’t have time to wait.”

Queensland Labor senator Murray Watt said the Government must come clean on what action it had taken.

“Sadly, if the Government’s previous track record in aged care is anything to go by, this action will be too slow for the residents who deserve change,” Senator Watt said.