Category: Things to watch

Don’t you hate it when you are getting nowhere?

Recently Village Manager Vanessa White from OakTree Dural, an inaugural member of our DCMI Village Management Professional Development program, reached out to her local MP Justin Lesser as a last resort to assist her 18 month fight with Telstra to obtain suitable connections to phone and internet for the resident in her village.

OakTree Dural is just over 30km from Sydney’s CBD, yet residents have been unable to connect with doctors via Telehealth. The COVID pandemic has heightened her residents need to communicate via phone and internet with family, friends and importantly support services.

After nearly two years of unanswered requests and with no rectification in sight by Telstra,  Justin recognised the urgency and began a campaign to highlight to Telstra’s CEO that this situation was unacceptable.

His campaign was taken up by the Daily Telegraph, Allan Jones 2GB, Seven Nightly News and a number of smaller media outlets. Telstra got the message.

This is just one example of why establishing a sound working relationship with your local MP can be mutually beneficial. 

In our Village Management Professional Development program I am often heard preaching the benefits of maintaining working relationships with you local MP.  Whether it is to assist in situations such as this one, to provide support on grant programs, or to open the new veggie garden.

It’s easy. Invite them to talk to residents about what they are doing for the local community, and to have their photo taken. Remember, every resident has local family as well.

Think of it as a ‘win win’ relationship. You will get some access to additional support or information, you will be helping to educate our future Ministers on the benefit of Retirement Living and may even in cases like this one, get someone to champion your cause.

For the local Member they get recognition for assisting a large number of local constituents with an issue, the opportunity to meet local voters all in one place and be educated about retirement living for use in future party committees and discussions.

If you haven’t started that relationship with your local member already, put it on your ‘what I would like to achieve over winter’ list!

Can you tell residents about a COVID-19 case in the village – check the Privacy Act
A common question asked of us in recent days by Village Managers has been around whether or not operators are able to notify the resident population if a resident has:

notified them that they are self-isolating after a close contact
been directed to self-isolate by the public health system
or has been confirmed as having COVID-19 and directed to return to their home
My admired colleague Danielle Lim from Queensland base law firm DSL Law shared last week the importance of the Privacy Act implications that may be required to be considered by retirement living operators prior to making these decisions.

Danielle shared, “If the unfortunate situation of a confirmed COVID-19 case occurs within the community, there are some privacy implications involved in disclosing the identity of the infected resident”.

“The Privacy Act would normally require that consent is obtained from the infected resident before their identity is disclosed”.

“Although privacy guidance has been updated in response to COVID-19, the best response remains to take reasonable steps to obtain ‘consent’ prior to disclosing specific details about a resident’s situation and personal details”.

In my own experience to date, if you are able to contact the most local Public Health department to the village location, they too will assist you with your decision by providing information on the likely public health risk to the surrounding community.

However Danielle went on to say:

“Following a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19 within a community, this news should be disclosed to residents and staff, without disclosing the infected person’s identity”.

“In a situation in which an infected person refuses to self-isolate, it is likely that exemptions within the Privacy Act would enable their identity to be disclosed to the community for the purpose of protecting people from exposure to the virus”.

We understand how challenging this situation is for you as the Village Manager balancing the risk to the wider community and the legal rights of each resident.

We have developed a simple guide in dealing with this situation from an operational view to help you at https://www.tearainstitute.co.nz/covid-19-village/.

Coronavirus is most dangerous to older people and particularly those over 80.

This group has a 14.8% death rate according to a large epidemiological study of 72,000 cases in China.

Now is the time to review your infectious diseases policy and procedure and consider whether a specific COVID-19 policy and procedure is required.

Here are some steps to start the process:

1. Regularly review the advice of the Health Authority and check the advice for staff. A good place to start is with this Health Department web site and fact sheets for you and your staff.
2. Develop a notification program to residents – which may change as the advice changes. It can include the most current advice from Health Agencies, personal hygiene standards within common areas, information on self-isolation requirements
3. Develop a similar communication strategy, on the job training, and reinforcement activities for all staff. You may also consider a mandatory notification of symptoms/travel to a nominated senior executive.
4. Review the requirement for visitors/contractors to the site, long and short term, and the need for them to acknowledge and adhere to the guidelines set out for residents and staff.

Here are other COVID-19 resources

• Health Department – coronavirus information and resources 
• BOMA International – coronavirus resources 
• World Health Organisation – coping with stress during coronavirus outbreak 

Matt Church is welcomed back to open the Village Summit 2020 on Monday 10th and Tuesday 11th of August at the Sheraton Grand Hyde Park. 

Last year Matt opened our minds to new ways of thinking about the future skills needed in business.​

See a snippet HERE.

Matt is recognised by International Federation of Professional Speakers as one the top 21 most influential people in the leadership industry on the planet.

Matt is committed to helping people prepare for tomorrow by taking action today. His philosophy can be summed up in one word: NEXT! What is the best next thing you can do to future proof your business or career?

Believing powerfully in the idea that commercial success is best achieved by delivering value beyond expectations, Matt will investigate The Power of Leadership: How to inspire residents to live their best life, how to grow yourself and add value to your community.

Find out more about the Village Summit HERE.

This week Sydney Startup WizeNomads launched a grassroots movement to connect age-friendly employers with experienced people. 

WizeNomads is an organisation based on inspiring experienced people to find work opportunities and connect with age friendly employers. They promote multi-generational workforces and are the conduit between businesses and people via growing generational connections.

WizeNomads connect with pre-screened age-friendly companies, offer learning and advice to inspire confidence and new skills and they are starting to build a multi-generational community and network.

Find out more HERE.

They believe there is a plethora of hidden skills, wisdom and that mature persons in the workplace can have a positive impact on the nature of business. 

When I came across this it resonated with my lived experience. That as Village Managers we should be identifying, engaging and consulting with residents within our Retirement Communities that too may have a plethora of hidden skills, wisdom, connections etc that could be tapped into for the benefit of the village. There is a certain Chairman in a village I managed about a decade ago that very graciously taught me this lesson, you will know who you are Mr Francis if you are reading this.  

One thing is for certain a Village Manager’s role is very busy so if there are residents in your community with a skill set or speciality then I can highly recommend tapping into those skills to help you with research or another point of view. Good communication and consultation is definitely the key to great decision making in my experience.

We have made the difficult decision to postpone the 2nd VILLAGE SUMMIT conference, scheduled for 20 and 21 February.

So many people in communities across Australia have been affected by the devastating bushfires and natural disasters, including our colleagues and their families.

We have taken the stance to move the conference to the later part of the year to allow time for communities to recover.  

The new date for our VILLAGE SUMMIT at the Sheraton Grand Sydney is Monday 10 & Tuesday 11 August.

We made this decision after significant consultation with delegates, operators and speakers. All supported the move and re-signed to join us for the new dates. (Thanks!)

We understand that it is not only the business and operations of villages that have been affected, but also village residents and their families, village staff and their families and importantly, their wider local communities.

We certainly apologise if this impacts you negatively, but we believe it is the appropriate action currently.

With everyone involved recommitting to August, the program continues to be ‘fabulous’.

Check it out HERE.

Fires happen. The past four months have been ‘catastrophic’ with drought and tinder dry bush.

But fire happens every year in villages for domestic reasons, as many as you would know. We report in The Weekly SOURCE newsletter an average of four village homes being burnt to the ground every winter because a heater or a stove is left on.

Having plans and policies in place is vital – and now required in NSW with their new Rules of Conduct. And the plans must include the unexpected.

We spoke to Patrick Reid, the CEO of NSW South Coast based IRT who had seven aged care homes and seven villages in the fire zones on New Year’s Eve.

One of the challenges they had to handle was nine residents that required ambulance evacuation from their Dalmeny aged care centre but the local town of Narooma only had two ambulances and multiple calls for them.

Telephone lines also failed as communication towers burnt down; and they had to ensure sites had enough supplies of pureed and texture modified food.

Their pharmacists also stepped up to ensure residents were provided with their medication, with their Malua Bay pharmacist still seeing clients despite losing his home in the fires

We also spoke to Nikki Fisher, COO at Ingenia. They had 10 land lease communities and holiday communities in the fire zone over the Christmas/New Year. At Lake Conjola they lost two homes to fire (while the local community lost 70 homes) and had no power for eight days with 73 residents who had decided to stay despite evacuation advice.

Ingenia worked with Emergency headquarters to have police escorts to bring in generators and satellite phones and sent out over 10,000 emails to families updating on events.

(For more background and lessons from Ingenia see next Tuesday’s the Weekly SOURCE newsletter).

The message is we all must be professional in our preparation for the unexpected. Tools and education are available through membership of our DCM Institute personal development program. You can learn more HERE.

Photographs courtesy of Ingenia.