Over the next six weeks, eight Regional Meets by Village Managers are taking place across the country. See the dates and locations opposite.
Any Village Manager or head office staff can attend for the cost of a gold coin.
Regional meets have been created by our DCM Institute to support Village Managers in the field.
Each meet is staged at a retirement village so local managers can network and exchange local knowledge and coordinate local promotion of retirement villages.
Our DCM Institute portal provides the Secretariat service to establish the meeting and promote it to local Village Managers.
You can register HERE for any of these regional meets or to set up your own.
ARVAS replaces the Lifemark and IRCAS accreditation programs.
This new village accreditation scheme is co-owned by the Property Council of Australia and Leading Age Services Australia (LASA).
It will focus on the expectations of both existing and future residents who choose to live in your retirement villages across all states and territories.
ARVAS will offer more robust quality and operational processes that incorporate six traditional areas, and a new quality area of resident care.
The seven areas are:
Community Management
Human Resource Management
Resident Entry and Exit
Resident Engagement and Feedback
Environment, Services and Facilities
Safety and Security
Resident Care (if applicable)
The new scheme is an extension to the existing Retirement Living Code of Conduct aimed at creating certainty and transparency for those living in retirement communities, including dispute resolution.
Your operator needs to decide to engage with ARVAS for your village.
Here at the DCM Institute, we recognise the importance of the Retirement Living Code of Conduct and ARVAS. We encourage Village professionals to start familiarising yourselves with these frameworks, encourage your operator to participate and begin planning.
And remember, the DCM Institute continues to provide support and tools to enable participants in the Village Manager Professional Development program to better understand and achieve quality standards and processes for their communities.
With over 200 Village Managers and professionals enrolled in the Village Management Professional Development program across the nation the DCM Institute community is also growing.
Results for the first half of the program have been outstanding with 200 participants declaring:
The program content as excellent.
The opportunity to interact with other Village Managers as excellent.
The ability to use our new skills and knowledge back in our villages as excellent.
The participants also shared that the Professional Development days delivered:
Peer to peer networking and support.
State-based legal presentations.
Retirement village industry specifics were the most useful components of the workshop days.
The enthusiasm, desire and commitment from these truly inspirational leaders in our sector has been wonderful to see, not to mention the friendships and connections.
Our team at DCM Institute is growing too. Last month we welcomed Tania Kelly (pictured), a passionate retirement living professional who will be assisting our village professional community in their day to day roles.
Tania has over 20 years’ experience working in leadership and operational management, 12 years in the aged care sector, and management and hands-on experience in 100 village portfolio.
As a Village Manager part of our job is being the resource centre to assist residents and their families throughout their life journey.
I often get asked by Village Managers, “How do I help family and friends make decisions about a resident’s need for more services, or an aged care package?”
Whilst My Aged Care is the obvious place to start, I also like to provide a link to our own Aged Care 101. It offers additional resources like videos that explain in plain English, what can be a very complex process. (It has over 40,000 visits a month now)
You can also look to referral groups like CareAbout.
Building a link to a retirement advisor who specialises in aged care is really valuable.
You can ask Aged Care Gurus for a qualified advisor in your area.
Form great relationships with local home care providers so that when that question is asked by family and friends you have all the resources at your fingertips.
At the last Regional Meet in Victoria in June attendees were able to be a part of specific discussion groups for retirement living, community care and residential care.
In these groups they were able to share insights, trends and knowledge to support each other.
Next Tuesday, at Village Baxter, another breakfast will be held with guest speaker Andy Price (pictured, left) providing insightful information in his capacity as Director for Victoria and Tasmania, Complaints Operations, in the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.
Yesterday Aveo announced agreement to be purchased by the huge Canadian investment fund Brookfield. This is good news for retirement village operators – and managers.
There are many reasons.
It is a $1.3 billion vote of confidence in retirement villages by a conservative investor that is looking at the long-term health of retirement villages. This gives all operators – and regulators – confidence.
Brookfield would only buy it if it believed it can add value to their investment. They will do this by reinvesting in older villages, making them suitable to the more demanding new customers (i.e. baby boomers).
This is great for existing residents, plus the local communities where the money will be spent with local suppliers.
Brookfield will also invest in quality staff – which means training and reward for professionalism. Village managers will be in demand and a career path will evolve.
Brookfield will also want to make sure village homes sell fast and at a good price. They have the money and they will invest in marketing. All retirement villages will benefit.
It will take 12 to 24 months for all this to roll out, but it is ‘good news’.
Last issue we spent considerable time covering the reputational damage done to the retirement village sector by the failure of the aged care home attached to the Earle Haven Retirement Village on the Gold Coast – the aged care home is also called the Earle Haven Retirement Village(!).
In summary, there has been little news over the last two weeks as the village operator and the aged care operator have both got lawyers involved, so everyone is keeping their heads down.
We do know they are being referred to the Royal Commission into Aged Care – so more will become public.
Meanwhile on our DCM website villages.com.au, new sales enquiry for all retirement villages south of Brisbane is down by at least 10% compared to the rest of the country. Not surprising.
Earle Haven sales will be particularly hit. It’s a big village with 426 villas and 110 serviced apartments (total 536). Short-term sales are going to be tough.
With the 20% serviced apartments the average occupancy will be eight years, which means close to 70 homes will become vacant each year or 1.3 every week.
QLD has an 18 months buyback rule which could be challenging for the owner. If you can only sell half those vacancies over 18 months that will build to 100 homes the owner will have to start buying. They currently stand at about $250,000 each, so that equates to $25 million cash will be required – and growing.
For us in the village sector, this is why fast sales are so important – which is why ‘trust’ in retirement villages is so important – for our residents and for the operator.
All the research shows the Village Manager is pivotal in establishing and maintaining local ‘trust’, and sales.
We need contracts, but they can be painful can’t they when working with residents.
Conversations
with some village managers, combined with some research we have done
with residents, prompted us to write this discussion piece. It might
give you something to think about.
(The research was done in January 2017. Called the Villages.com.au National ResidentSurvey, with 19,600 residents across 520 villages filling in a 48 question survey. Your village may have been one).
The contract is the last step formalisation of the agreement between the
incoming resident and the operator.
But does it represent what the operator offers and the customer accepts?
Physical, emotional or financial
Unlike
most purchase transactions, buying into a retirement village is a very
human transaction – it goes to the fundamentals of quality of life. Villages offer physical, emotional and financial security.
That is what we market and sell.
Are these embodied in the contract that binds the operator and the resident? The answer is ‘No’.
It’s a property contract
A
retirement village contract is a property contract. The operator
provides the resident a lease with a licence to occupy, or a loan
agreement with a licence to occupy or a strata agreement with a
management contract.
All contracts are developed under in each state.
Since
1978 the Retirement Village Act legislation and its regulations have
evolved to protect both operators (owners of village properties) and
residents (tenants in effect of village properties) in their contractual
agreement providing physical accommodation (in ‘quiet enjoyment’).
It’s
not easy legislating and regulating the human
aspects of seniors living in a medium density community (often for the
first time for the resident and with predictable declining frailty) –
and it has not been generally achieved.
Not a ‘human’ contract
The
result is complex property/tenancy legislation interpreted into
contracts that ageing consumers do not understand – the language, the
complexity or the basic purpose of the contract.
These contracts do not go to the ‘human contract’ between the resident and a village operator.
The concepts of ‘reasonable’ and ‘fair’ don’t fit in
with the wording of the laws.
The contracts cover ‘all residents’ which may mean not favouring one resident over another or providing special treatment.
Not listened to, not respected
Individual residents then feel they are not being listened to (‘respected’).
Examples
may be allowing a resident to make modifications to their unit when
other residents are not permitted, or allowing a partner not named on
the lease to remain a resident after the leaseholder has departed.
These restrictions, the management of the ‘human’ aspects of
individuals in the village, is at the core of much of the dissatisfaction identified in our resident research.
Drivers of discontent.
When
residents have issues and they are responded to reasonably, fairly and
promptly by the village manager, almost irrespectively of the outcome
for or against the request, the satisfaction of the resident remains high.
When the issue is not responded to, the satisfaction plummets.
See the chart below measuring satisfaction out of 10.
Did you know that in WA operators are required to describe exactly what they propose to do with the DMF cash?
What is the DMF for in your organisation?
Often when I dig into this with operators there are some great stories to be told.
The
funding of social welfare programs, the development of homeless
housing, additional funds to provide services for a nursing home,
reinvestment into the village asset, social programs within the village,
the list goes on and on….
It is not only great to understand what it is used for but also how this might benefit the
residents.
Ie.
Investment in the maintenance of the village brand will surely go
towards assisting the village to obtain reasonable sale periods, build
the funnel of people looking to move in the future, ensure the village
brand is recognised as a trusted brand by friends and family within the
local area.
If you don’t know the answer to this question I encourage you to have this conversation with your manager.
You
will benefit, your sales people can explain to new enquirers and the
village team will be able to articulate the many wonderful things that
are often done with this profit when they are questioned in a work and
social environment.
You have most
probably seen the TV news reports on the crisis shutdown of the Earle
Haven Retirement Village, with approximately 70 residents ‘abandoned by
the operator’.
The important facts are these.
Earle
Haven Retirement Village is a co-located property, meaning it is a big
retirement village (approximately 500 homes) and a separate aged care
home with approximately 70 residents.
It is located at Nerang, 12 km inland from Surfers Paradise.
The same name is used for both the village and the aged
care home – Earle Haven Retirement Village.
Even the government website my aged care calls the aged care home the Earle Haven Retirement Village.
Both
the village and the aged care home are owned by a company called People
Care, which is owned by Arthur Miller. People Care is the operator of
the retirement village.
Approximately 18 months ago People Care outsourced the operations of the aged care home to a company called Help Street.
Last
Thursday at 2 PM one of the staff of the aged care home rang ‘000’ to
say that Help Street had (allegedly) abandoned the 70 residents and most
of the staff had walked out of the
building.
Police
and ambulances arrived to find the residents unattended and that the
aged care home had been stripped of equipment, medicines, essential
products like incontinence pads, food and more.
It
took paramedics and doctors from Queensland health until 2 AM Friday
morning to relocate all 70 residents at other aged care homes and
hospitals.
The most
damning element was the alleged removal of resident’s records – meaning
the new carers did not know medications, medical histories or doctors.
And this is where the details become murky.
Nobody has yet identified clearly in the media who made the decision to abandon the residents and who stripped the home.
People Care state that they had given notice to Help Street that their contract was terminated, effective next month (August).
Help Street state that they had not been paid by People Care.
Everybody
is being very careful in what they say because of the definite legal
actions that are going to flow thick and fast, including lawsuits.
Importantly for us in the retirement village sector, there are implications.
The
first is that across the country for at least 48 hours the media was
reporting that residents of a retirement village were abandoned. Most
have now been modified their wording to say the Earle Haven Nursing
Home.
The
second implication was that the actual retirement village was in
financial difficulty, with stories that a resident had paid over
$300,000 to enter in the 48 hours beforehand; this was ‘lost’.
It later came out this was a RAD payment to join the aged care home – not to enter the retirement village.
The
third implication is perhaps the most serious. This is a story about two
operators arguing over money, with no apparent regard for the residents
under their care.
At
a time when regulators are considering various arguments on whether
residents of retirement villages are fairly treated financially – best
demonstrated by buybacks – this story does not present well.
It attacks ‘trust’ in retirement villages and operators.
We can be assured that the story won’t go away either, as the truth slowly unfolds.
And
now this event is being pushed to the Royal commission into Aged Care,
with the
possibility that retirement villages will be added to the scope of the
Royal Commission – something the sector was pleased to have avoided.
On
Tuesday, five days after the event, People Care held a meeting of
village residents and their families, reassuring them that the village
and their homes was financially secure.
By our next edition of The Village Manager we should know a lot more. Hope this article helps.
