Carol Altmann – The Terrier

On Friday, I deposited all the $$$ we raised to mount a legal challenge against the Lyndoch Living board into a trust account. Now, we wait.

And while we wait for the barrister’s opinion, let’s remember why this legal challenge is even necessary.

It’s necessary because, after seven decades of needing the community to survive, the seven remaining members of the Lyndoch board have decided to disconnect Lyndoch from the community, without consultation or explanation.

These seven people have become gatekeepers and, in my view, enablers.

They are not the only ones. There is a band of hand-selected enablers across Lyndoch now: carefully chosen for their willingness to oblige without question in return for…what? A salary? A promised career path? A certificate of appreciation?

Those who wouldn’t oblige, or who spoke up, or challenged, or simply decided they had had enough, are either going ….or gone. There was actually a hit list of those Lyndoch wanted out. They are all gone.

And as I write this tonight, yet another clinical leader has left.

And as I write this, I come to the end of another week where the distressing messages just keep coming in about staff shortages, care workers covering for nurses, nurses being run ragged, staff working double-shifts, being exhausted, and almost spent.

I would normally show you a screenshot of the staff shortages, but now Lyndoch is so paranoid about who is “leaking to The Terrier” (aka, letting the truth out) that staff fear text messages from Lyndoch will contain clues to try and trace them.

Staff also know – even if they no longer work at Lyndoch – that Lyndoch is watching closely to see if they comment or like a Terrier post.

The intimidation doesn’t end, it seems, even if you no longer work there.

So I will instead tell you that yesterday, 26 February, Lyndoch sent out a text saying it was, once again, “desperately in need of staff” in the dementia (Audrey Prider) and high care (Lake Lodge) wings.

In Audrey Prider, the high-care dementia wing, the shortages included four staff on two shifts, from 7am to 3.30pm and from 1.30pm til 10pm.

Audrey Prider has 45 beds and, during the day, should typically have nine staff: 1 Registered Nurse, 6 enrolled nurses and 2 care workers.

If you remove four staff from that equation, resident care suffers. Many, I am told, have to spend the day in bed as there is just not enough staff to go around.

And yet amid all of this desperation and exhaustion, we hear nothing from Lyndoch and nothing from the board.

So this, this is just one of the reasons that we are fighting back for our voice to be heard at the table. Not as board members, but as general members – from the community – who are prepared to stand up for our elderly and those who care for them.

I know for a fact the staff are reading these posts. We are here for you. We are fighting for you. And we are not giving up. #pressingon

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

This time last week, this page pushed a boat from the shore in the hope of raising $5000 to fund a court challenge against the Lyndoch Living board.

Not only did we meet that goal within two hours – we have more than doubled it.

Online and offline donations now sit at $10,570 (the fundraiser closes at midnight tonight).

Thankyou.

Thankyou to every single person who donated whatever they could afford to help.

Some people donated five or ten dollars, some donated two hundred or five hundred, but every person donated with the same sense of purpose: to bring the community back to the heart of Lyndoch.

Every cent of this Lyndoch fighting fund will go toward that goal.

The funds will shortly be transferred to a trust account with a legal firm and will be used to secure a barrister who is the best in this field of law.

The barrister will provide an expert legal opinion on whether the current Lyndoch board – collectively and individually – have failed in their duty to uphold the original spirit and purpose of Lyndoch aged care, which was started by the community more than 60 years ago.

This failure includes the rejection of all general membership applications these past two years.

It’s a challenge that, we believe, will result in a hearing in either the County or Supreme Court, and this is the first step.

We have been fighting this battle for accountability and transparency for more than two years, in fact it is almost two years to the day since a group of concerned people met with local federal MP Dan Tehan to express their serious concerns about Lyndoch.

Those concerns, in the past 12 months, have only escalated.

But now the community has spoken.

It is no longer waiting for the cavalry to arrive.

It IS the cavalry.

I will keep you informed every step of the way as this challenge unfolds but for tonight, I want to say thankyou.

Thankyou to every person who has had the courage to stand up for Lyndoch and to not simply sit back, stay silent, and watch.

And thankyou to everyone who has helped this terrier to keep fighting.

On we go.

[The fighting fund will remain open until midnight. You can find it here. If you would prefer direct deposit, please email me at TerrierCarol@protonmail.com]

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Well blow me down: Lyndoch Living has opened up its annual general meeting to the community it serves.

If you haven’t heard already, people who sent emails asking for a link to the AGM via Zoom on Tuesday 14 December have recently been sent a reply saying that they will receive a link and an agenda on Monday 13 December.

This is a breakthrough.

Lyndoch has finally realised, it seems, that it has obligations both as a charity and as a community owned organisation.

As a charity, it must – by law – maintain public confidence in its operations.

Blocking the public out of an AGM does not instil confidence: it crushes it.

In terms of accountability as a charity, it would be a big fat fail.

And as a community owned organisation, Lyndoch has a moral obligation to allow the community it serves to join its AGM as observers.

We have every right to watch the chair, Sue Cassidy, deliver the annual report and to hear how Lyndoch is travelling financially.

We also have a right to see who, if anyone, has been approached for the two board positions which have remained vacant since May and who from the current board will be elected again.

This is pretty basic stuff and for Lyndoch to have tried to slam the door shut and make the AGM a select, invitation only event was sending it down a perilous path that I am almost certain would make an interesting case for the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission.

But while the door has opened slightly, it is far from being flung off its hinges.

None of us can ask questions at the AGM, we can only watch.

We can’t ask questions unless we are members of Lyndoch and we know how that works: nobody is allowed to join unless hand-picked.

I have a number of questions I would like asked at the AGM and perhaps you do too.

But we can’t ask them, because we have all been denied membership to Lyndoch.

Bugger that. Let’s ask them anyway.

If you have a question, please email it to me (TerrierCarol@protonmail.com) or DM via Facebook and I will make sure they are sent to the chair by next Friday, 9 December.

Here are a couple of questions on my list:

Is the $22 million medical clinic fully tenanted?

What is the contingency plan if unable to fill it?

What is the debt strategy of Lyndoch?

How many staff have left the organisation in the past 18 months and how much has this cost?

What is the strategy to retain experienced staff?

Why are there no copies of previous annual reports on the Lyndoch Living website?

Has the board checked the figures presented to the AGM? How was this done?

What feedback, if any, has the board had regarding staff satisfaction at Lyndoch?

Has the board reviewed Lyndoch’s business partnerships and sponsorships and how are these performing?

What is the financial position of the Waterfront Living apartment complex? Is it fully sold?

…over to you.

(If you would like to join the Zoom, email ceo@lyndoch.org.au by 9 December.)

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

An intermission. I was thrilled to be invited to be a part of this new podcast, Journo, put together by Nick Bryant, a stellar journo, and former BBC correspondent in New York who is now living in Sydney.

If you have 39.09 mins to spare, you may enjoy a listen to how The Terrier and other small, nippy, independent sites are holding those in power to account. The link is here: https://pod.fo/e/f13ef

See you Sunday.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

My final profile from the roll call of the rejected. This is Claire Macrae Drylie and her late aunt Gwen McKellar.

In the 1960s, Gwen, or Mate as she was called by family, sorted out the pay packets for Lyndoch staff each week for free.

But now her niece Claire, who has lived in Warrnambool for more than 40 years, is among the 115 people whose membership application to Lyndoch was rejected without reason.

It doesn’t matter a squit that her aunt Mate was one of the many, many people who Lyndoch once relied upon to survive.

Claire is the final person from the long roll call of rejections that I will profile here, and I have chosen her story because it captures the community spirit that sustained Lyndoch for decades.

When Lyndoch was still in its infancy, Mate volunteered her time each week to “do the pays” for the Lyndoch staff, working from the kitchen table in her home in Henna St.

At the time, Mate was working as a secretary and raising two young children, Margie and Andrew, with her husband Colin.

But still she found time each week for her Lyndoch work.

Claire remembers the “pay days” as something like this:

“Mate sitting at a 1960s Laminex table (yellow) with a stack of cash and Lyndoch envelopes, with my sister Annie and I ‘helping’.

“Margie and Andy could be crying in the background because they are hungry, but Mate always put the needs of her community, ie. Lyndoch, first.

“And that’s how Lyndoch was born, on the sweat of ordinary people like Mate.”

Claire has nailed it.

Lyndoch was born on the sweat of ordinary people like Mate.

The Lyndoch board, led by chair Sue Cassidy and vice chair Kerry Nelson, has now decided that these ordinary people are no longer welcome and membership is by invitation only.

They don’t want people like Mate. If Mate was alive and had applied, she would not have made it through.

Such is the new corporate Lyndoch, where residents are customers, and progress is measured in concrete.

It is a community owned asset that has no community members.

And nobody knows why.

Tomorrow night I will write the responses from our community leaders – MPs Dan Tehan, Roma Britnell, Bev McArthur, Mayor Vicki Jellie and the Warrnambool City Councillors – to the blanket rejection.

Thanks for hanging in here this week. On we go.