Opinion: New ideas are challenging traditional aged care models

A VICTORIAN town is mixing aged and young people in new communities that promote wellbeing, writes GENEVIEVE BARLOW.

Rethink: New ideas are challenging the approach of separating our elderly into places where the people they see mostly are other older people.

THE Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has begun and our news waves are filling with stories of neglect, poor training and who knows whatever other malady beleaguers the care of our elderly.

Once again, we’ll be frightened, be despairing and perhaps even wonder what the heck happened to our civilised, modern Australia.

The spotlight on the inadequacies is greatly welcomed.

But not all aged care places are hell holes of abuse and neglect. Without being too much of a Pollyanna about this, I suspect that many rural communities could offer examples of homes and hostels where the care is personal and exceptional.

My home town of Rushworth has an outstanding example, the Waranga Aged Care Hostel, the idea for which came from local people who had foresight and tenacity to pursue its creation.

You, too, will know places, perhaps community or state-owned, that excel in aged care and caring for elderly people with high-care needs.

Yet perhaps there are even better models than separating our elderly into places where the people they see mostly are other frail, old people.

What about mixing up the ages so the young get to mix with the old, and vice versa?

Researchers at Queensland’s Griffith University are studying this.

Their Intergenerational Care Project is trialling two models. One is where an aged care centre is in the same place as a childcare centre, and the other is where childcare and aged care centres are located separately and one group travels to visit the other.

In North East Victoria, Yackandandah Health is dispensing with the notion that an older age group should live separately to the rest of the world in a gated village and only with other older people.

It’s bringing all ages into the centre. On premises that once hosted a bush nursing hospital, there are 60 residential aged-care places, and 46 people in retirement in hostel-like circumstances.

There is also a men’s shed, a doctor’s surgery and soon a childcare centre and cafe/restaurant will be added and 10 new one-bedroom apartments will be made available for short-term rent.

A further 16 residential aged-care places, sitting rooms, kitchens, walk-through wardrobes and bathrooms are being added. Near them, communal areas are also equipped with kitchens just like yours and mine at home.

Chief executive Annette Nuck is overseeing the change in direction at the community-owned centre.

“I don’t want to be bagging the retirement (and aged care) industry, but I don’t know who the hell thought of putting people in gated housing lots based on their age,” she says. “Being old isn’t an illness. It’s a phase of life.”

The notion of the childcare centre being at the same location developed after local families approached Annette and her aged care team to see if they would entertain the idea of bringing childcare on site.

“It’s near the school and very close to the kinder, the park and the swimming pool and a much better location than the previous childcare centre,” says Yackandandah Health board member Ben Gilbert. He said Yack Health had a very poor masterplan in play for the old bush nursing hospital site when locals decided to hold a housing forum to flesh out plans for Yackandandah’s future development.

This is where the idea emerged for the more contemporary units and refashioning of older sections into facilities that bring the community and all ages into the space.

Yackandandah, population 1800, is offering a brilliant example of how the elderly — retirees and the frail aged — can be part of a community.

MORE MIRANDA