It's been a difficult few years for aged care services across Australia, and Blayney's two major centres, Uralba Retirement Village in Carcoar and the Lee Hostel in Blayney, have been doing it hard.
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The dual impacts of COVID-19 and the recent Royal Commission into the sector has pushed extra demands on differing sides of the operation.
Chairman of Uralba Retirement Village Andrew Baulch said that with COVID putting extra pressure on staffing and procedures and the royal commission requiring extra details for them to be accredited, the centre has joined a number of other centres in falling behind.
"We had a really bad assessors report back in June," he said, "Compared to the previous one in 2017 where we passed all 44 standards with flying colours."
Uralba will be staying exactly as it is, and Lee Hostel will be staying exactly as it is.
- Miles Hedge - Chairman Lee Hostel.
"In the meantime they've brought in new standards which are very, very exacting. At last count there were 108 other facilities on the eastern seaboard that like us couldn't take on any new residents for three months.
As of this Saturday December 18 Uralba will be hopefully be free from those sanctions when the latest report is handed over.
"Judging by the feedback we've been receiving it's a lot better than previously and we're confident that we're in a good position to continue to provide residential aged care from now on," Mr Baulch said.
In order to do so though the facility had to employ extra staff to complete the accreditation process, a cost that Mr Baulch explains can't be sustained.
"Eighty per cent of all our costs are on staffing, that's if you can get staff," he said. "There needs to be a new model so that it's affordable to operate the facilities and pay people accordingly."
Chairman of the Lee Hostel board Miles Hedge said that the Lee Hostel is yet to undergo their accreditation and any talk of the two organisations merging is pure speculation.
"Uralba will be staying exactly as it is, and Lee Hostel will be staying exactly as it is," he said. "All we've been talking about is management assistance and even the extent of that hasn't been determined yet."
"The idea that we're merging is simply too far away and too difficult at this point to even consider. We're just talking about how we can work better together."
Mr Baulch agrees with Mr Hedge stating that any discussions are only in the preliminary stages and that there is scope for collaboration.
"We could look at developing an overarching group to secure residential care in the Blayney shire," he said.
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Mark Logan
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
