Sign it. Share it. Any Victorian resident can sign.
The petition to the Legislative Council asks for the State Government to work with the Federal Government to “take all possible steps” to replace the board with an administrator.
The administrator would remain until a new Lyndoch board can be elected via public nominations.
It has come to this.
Six weeks after more than 400 people gathered in the cold to call for greater transparency from the Lyndoch Living board, there has been nothing of the sort.
And judging by the non-sensical and insulting comments of the board Chair Sue Cassidy on ABC radio last week, the community will remain cut off, despite our many concerns around the care of our elderly and vulnerable.
The board has no interest or intention in engaging with the general community.
Trust in this board is now completely broken.
I hope this petition draws thousands of signatures between now and when it closes on 31 August.
It will then be tabled in Parliament by our local Member of the Legislative Council Bev McArthur, who delivered a statement to the rally on 5 June and who has continued to offer her full support to this cause.
A paper version of the petition will also be available at a public sign-up on the Warrnambool Civic Green next Sunday, 24 July, from 11am to 1pm. I plan to be there to help out.
Copies will also be available for you to take away to gather physical signatures from those unable to sign online.
All of the signatures – online and on paper – will be collated into one total.
Sign it. Share it. The message is clear: this board has to go.
[Disclosure: I assisted Keep Lyndoch Living to lodge this petition with the Legislative Council to ensure it met all the requirements.]
Lyndoch Living board on notice: open up or step aside
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
A week ago, hundreds of people gathered in the cold to stand up for Lyndoch Living and call upon the board to tell us what’s going on.
That call has fallen on deaf ears.
The only public comments from Lyndoch chair Sue Cassidy – as reported by The Standard last Monday – completely side-stepped the string of concerns raised at the rally by local MPs, ex-staff and concerned members of the community.
Statements from Hon Roma Britnell, Hon Bev McArthur, Hon Dan Tehan, former Lyndoch CEO Rhys Boyle, Dr Michael McCluskey, Diane Riordon, Sandy Hockley, and one little terrier, all asked the board for one thing:
Full transparency.
The board, in response, has shrugged its shoulders and shown no sign of changing a thing.
This lack of transparency flies in the face of Lyndoch being a community asset for more than 70 years.
And it flies in the face of Lyndoch being a registered charity that each year receives tens of millions of dollars from residents and taxpayers.
As one woman in the crowd said last week, “people sell their houses to go into Lyndoch”.
This lack of public accountability means we – the public – are being left in the dark by the board that is appointed to represent us.
So our questions remain: Why are so many Lyndoch staff leaving and going to work elsewhere in aged care?
Why are there so many shocking stories about declining residential care?
Why has Lyndoch cut off community memberships?
Is the $22 million (or whatever the cost is now) medical clinic financially sound?
Based on the report in The Standard, the only comment Ms Cassidy could offer was that the board are volunteers – which is irrelevant – and are community members – which is obvious.
The fact is that Lyndoch is now run like a private company and nobody outside of the tight, Lyndoch circle gets a look in.
The social contract between the board and the community has been completely broken.
As was made clear last Sunday, the community is agitated and people are worried.
People hold genuine concerns about Lyndoch’s financial future, its staffing, its management style, and, first and foremost, the daily care of our elderly citizens.
These concerns are based on fact: both Lyndoch Living nursing home and May Noonan Hostel in Terang are under threat of sanctions. We have no idea how these failings are being addressed and if Lyndoch is on track to be re-accredited in August.
The CEO, again in comments to The Standard, blamed the failings on tougher standards. If this is the case, why is Lyndoch the only aged care home in Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Camperdown, Mortlake and beyond to be failing?
And, as it stands, the $22 million new medical clinic is nowhere near being ready to open by next month, as planned.
This means delays, and most likely cost blowouts, but we have been told nothing.
The Lyndoch board can only ignore the community for so long.
From my standpoint, it’s now on notice.
It’s on notice from our MPs, who gave a public commitment to stand with us, and we are relying on Roma Britnell, Bev McArthur and Dan Tehan to follow through, strongly.
And it’s on notice from a groundswell of people from right across the community who are now speaking up and standing up to fight for Lyndoch, both up front and behind the scenes.
If we care about Lyndoch, we have to see this through and demand full transparency and a board that either connects with the community, or steps aside.
The future of our Lyndoch depends on it.
Fight4Lyndoch Living community rally: the speeches
More than 400 people gathered on Scoborio Reserve, next to Lyndoch Living, to rally for greater transparency around the aged care home. Image supplied.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
For those who couldn’t make it to the Fight4Lyndoch rally last Sunday, here are links to speeches and statements from:
Member for South-West Victoria Roma Britnell also gave a terrific speech, but unfortunately a hard copy was only in dot point form, so I have not included it here.
I also wish to repeat the simple statement of support offered to the rally by former Lyndoch CEO RhysBoyle.
Rhys guided Lyndoch for 20 years until his retirement in 2014:
“I support a re-evaluation of the facts to ensure that meaningful and informed decisions are being made that secure the future of Lyndoch,” he wrote.
More than 350 people turned out for the rally on Scoborio Reserve last Sunday, to stand in support of residents, their families and staff, and to hear for themselves the concerns around Lyndoch Living.
Those concerns come down to three main issues:
1. Declining residential care standards, staff shortages and staff resignations;
2. The financial viability of Lyndoch and, in particular, the sustainability of the $22 medical clinic;
3. The cutting out of the community from Lyndoch, including the end of community/general memberships.
While we await to hear whether the Aged Care and Safety Commission will re-accredit Lyndoch in August, the community fight continues.
For while the commission can act on the first point – residential care – it doesn’t deal with the other two points.
It’s up to us, as the community which owns Lyndoch, to make sure Lyndoch remains transparent and accountable to the community.
After the enormous response to the rally on Sunday, despite the freezing morning, our resolve has only strengthened.
Lyndoch board ignored staff warnings on looming crisis
[An edited extract from the letter sent by Lyndoch staff to the Lyndoch board in April last year.]
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Tonight I can reveal that a group of Lyndoch staff tried to alert the Lyndoch board to a looming staff crisis more than a year ago, but was ignored.
An explosive letter has emerged that was written by a group of experienced staff to the Lyndoch board on 2 April 2020 – 18 months ago.
The letter was delivered to the board via a trusted intermediary, a Warrnambool GP.
Staff are forbidden under Lyndoch policy to approach the board directly, but the authors, who represented a cross-section of Lyndoch, clearly felt they had no choice.
“It is with grave concern that we feel compelled to formally address the Board of Directors of Lyndoch Living,” the letter begins.
“Our knowledge that this direct communication may lead to employment termination must also demonstrate the gravity of our actions and the reason we undertake this anonymously,” it says.
Between them, the letter says, the authors have more than 50 years experience in aged care and they came with a warning:
“Over the last four years we have seen a significant deterioration of staff morale, and poor and highly detrimental decision making…,” they write.
“This has resulted in a very poor culture, significant stress and distress among staff, sick leave and resignations”.
Let’s just stop there for a moment.
I wish I could publish the entire letter, but Lyndoch is too litigious for me to take that risk, so what follows is my edited version of what the authors outline as their issues of major concern, the alleged causes and the request for action.
The staff tell the board that they tried to raise their concerns through the normal channels, but have got nowhere.
In fact the situation only got worse.
“Unfortunately we have met with obstruction, denial or dismissal at each point,” they write.
Either a lack of action or consequences for speaking up, meant other staff remained silent, which led to more “inappropriate and detrimental behaviour”.
The authors say they turned to two politicians for help who were alarmed by their claims and urged the staff to contact the board directly.
So they did, via a letter that could not be more direct.
They urged the board to do a “fearless review” of Lyndoch Living that would include three things:
1. Engage an independent company to undertake a cultural staff survey. (The) previous cultural review was prepared for the law firm that represents Lyndoch Living.
2. Ensure that the recommendations within the independent survey are tabled, considered and actioned by the Board;
3. Engage an independent forensic accountant to review appropriate resident related expenditure and review the current investment portfolio and commitments in line with a not-for-profit culture.
And at the end of the letter came the kicker.
The authors offered to meet with the board, to show their faces, and to step away from anonymity.
They would do this, they said, provided they could be protected from any threat to their jobs, and assured confidentiality.
This is huge.
Anybody who knows a Lyndoch worker who wants to speak up, but doesn’t, knows that the number one reason given is fear of being targeted, or losing their job.
The courageous staff behind this letter swallowed that fear because they believed if they did nothing, the situation would only deteriorate.
They decided to trust the board.
So they wrote their letter, they had it delivered via the GP and they waited for a response via the same intermediary.
And nothing happened.
They didn’t get a reply, much less an invitation to come and talk with the board in confidence.
I know the board received the letter and I know it was discussed, but it went no further.
The board stayed silent.
And the brave staff, their hearts swollen with disbelief and disappointment, felt that they were entirely on their own. They retreated back into the shadows and got on with caring for the elderly and vulnerable residents of Lyndoch.
That was 18 months ago.
I don’t know what has happened to the staff who wrote this letter, but their predicted catastrophe has come to pass.
The steady loss of experienced and dedicated staff from right across Lyndoch over the past five years has, in recent weeks, become a flood.
And still the board says, and does, nothing.
* Board members Percy Eccles and Suzanne Coulson resigned in March and May of this year. They have not been replaced.
Lyndoch board gives short shrift to questions from Roma
Even South West MP Roma Britnell can’t get straight answers from the Lyndoch Living board.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Even South West MP Roma Britnell can’t get straight answers from the Lyndoch Living board.
Its fulsome response to Ms Britnell was, wait for it, that it was “acting within the Lyndoch constitution.
End of conversation.
Ms Britnell was told nothing more.
At least the board is even handed when it comes to answering questions: it ignores everyone.
Ms Britnell, like the rest of us, learned nothing about why the applications were rejected, the criteria used, or the process followed.
We can only surmise, therefore, that there was no process or selection criteria.
It doesn’t matter that Ms Britnell, a State MP and our elected representative, was asking questions on behalf of her local constituents.
She was given zero from the board that, in theory, is also supposed to represent the community.
So if Ms Britnell can’t get an answer, what hope does someone like Warrnambool resident Margy Jackson have?
Margy, a retired school teacher, recently wrote to Lyndoch chair Sue Cassidy expressing her concerns about Lyndoch and the cutting out of the community.
Margy has had no response.
Former Deakin Professor James Dunbar and retired naval officer Jim Burke wrote to the board some months ago expressing their concerns about the viability of the $22m medical clinic being built at Lyndoch.
They have had no response.
It appears that the current board of seven volunteers – Ms Cassidy, Kane Grant, Andrew Paton, Kerry Nelson, Prof Rob Wallis, Lorraine Mielnik and Ron Page – has decided they are answerable only to themselves and the CEO.
Have they lost sight of who built and supported Lyndoch for so many decades?
Why else would the board agree to turn its back on their own community?
And why would these remaining board members (Percy Eccles and Suzanne Coulson quit earlier this year) want to be a part of such a closed shop?
Only they can answer that question.
I don’t expect any answers soon, but with Lyndoch’s staff and residential care – its core business – suffering under the board’s watch, the questions will only keep coming.
