Carol Altmann – The Terrier

UPDATE:  Another one down. The third and final clinical leader in the Lyndoch Living hostel area is now on sick leave.

This means there are no clinical leaders left in an area of up to 128 residents.

All three leaders have gone on sick or stress leave in the past eight weeks and between them have 30 years, another 30 years and more than 10 years experience.

They are unlikely to return under the current management.

This part of Lyndoch, which includes the new $13m Swinton Wing and Riverside, now has nobody formally in the role of clinical leader – skilled nurses who work closely with the Nurse Unit Managers on administering medication, and implementing and monitoring the care plan for each resident.

They also work closely with the Personal Care Workers.

Now they are all gone. 

The two experienced Nurse Unit Managers for this area are also on extended leave.

In the space of two months, this area has lost all of its leaders and mentors who have built strong relationships with each other and with the residents, who miss them and hope they are okay.

I know this, because people contact me.

So far, Lyndoch’s answer to this growing crisis is to expect other nursing staff to fill the gaps: shuffle the chairs, move the chess pieces, switch and swap, and plug holes wherever they appear.

Lyndoch called a pep-talk meeting of all the PCWs on Monday which, from all accounts, only underscored how blinded senior management are to the looming crisis.

Some staff walked out not long after the pep talk started and well before it ended: they had heard enough.

They were hoping for a plan, some reassurance that more hands on deck were coming, but they were apparently given no such comfort.

Instead, according to my ever-trusty sources, they were told if Lyndoch was to have an accreditation assessment right now, it would fail.

As we know, Lyndoch is already under scrutiny from the national aged care watchdog and failed three out of four key standards, which must be addressed if it is to be re-accredited in February next year.

Re-accrediation was due in August this year, but due to Covid was delayed by six months – the Lyndoch hierarchy must be breathing a huge sigh of relief for the extension.

And yet none of this, not a word, merits any public explanation from Lyndoch Living as to what is going on, why and what is being done to address it.

The staff exodus and the impact does not warrant a peep from the Lyndoch board.

It has also not stirred any interrogation by local mainstream media: not a single question has been asked or appeared in any stories that I have seen.

And so it just rolls on and I find that shocking.

One of the few to speak up is the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation which last week sent a string of questions to the Lyndoch Acting Director of Nursing that it has asked to be answered by tomorrow.

It is a glimmer of hope for at least some answers and accountability.

We shall see.

This photo of senior Lyndoch Living staff was taken on the front lawns of Lyndoch in 2017.

Of those in the line-up, only two faces remain.

Three, if I count the CEO, pictured in the centre.

The turnover from those in this photo includes four Nurse Unit Managers, an Occupational Therapist, the Chief Financial Officer, the Director of Hotel Services, the Head of kitchen services, the Human Resources Co-ordinator, the Director of Nursing, and the Director of People and Resilience which is a title dripping with irony, because resilience doesn’t come into this.

They are all gone, regardless of their “resilience”.

Last week I posted a photo of seven experienced clinical staff who have left in the past eight weeks, but this photo dips into an exodus that has been from right across Lyndoch.

Some of those in this photo had only just started in their roles, but were gone within three years.

Why?

We have not been told why.

I have written many times now about the loss of up to 200 staff from Lyndoch Living in the past five years and still nobody has told us why.

The board, it seems, considers such a loss quite acceptable, normal even.

It is this normalisation of the abnormal which has got me thinking – was this staff purge part of the grand plan all along?

Was the idea to get rid of anyone who complained, cost too much, knew too much or who simply didn’t apply the “Lyndoch Way” of saying “yes!” even when their hearts told them to say “no, no, no”?

Maybe it has been a part of Lyndoch’s grand masterplan that, let’s face it, very few people knew much about and still don’t.

The community owns Lyndoch, but in the past five years it has been kept completely in the dark.

Who knew that Tomlinson Wing would be demolished to make way for a $22m medical clinic?

Who knew that Lyndoch had, in 2018, quietly become a Company Limited by Guarantee that would be used to cut the community out?

And who knew that so many hard-working, committed local people who worked at Lyndoch would be forced to leave in a purge that still rolls on?

The impact of these losses is already being felt and my fear is that the full impact is yet to come.

Again, for the sake of the elderly and vulnerable residents, I hope I am wrong.

Carol Altmann- The Terrier

Tonight, names and faces.

I want to share with you the names and faces in this montage, who are now among an estimated 200 people whose faces you have not seen, but who have left Lyndoch Living in the past five years.

Each of them has a name, a face and have spent years caring for our elderly – they deserve to be more than just a number.

Numbers are numbing.

It’s the names and faces that capture what has been unfolding at Lyndoch since 2015, with a trickle of staff leaving turning into a stream and now into a flood.

The seven faces here are among those, in the past eight weeks, who have either resigned from Lyndoch or taken extended sick leave.

They have been part of the backbone of Lyndoch and, between them, have decades of aged care and nursing experience:

Director of Nursing Julie Baillie, who has worked for Lyndoch for more than 20 years.

Operational Manager of Workforce Development and Registered Nurse Roselie Morey, who has worked at Lyndoch for more than a decade.

Clinical Leader and Enrolled Nurse Scott Lucas, again another decade of service.

Nurse Unit Manager and Registered Nurse Anita Plowman, who has worked at Lyndoch for almost 30 years.

Registered nurse and former Nurse Unit Manager, Maxine Lane, 20 years of service at Lyndoch.

Registered nurse and former May Noonan Hostel Manager  Jeanette Edge, another 10 years of service.

Nurse Unit Manager and Registered Nurse Cath Porter, just over 10 years of service.

All gone and unlikely to return.

So many Lyndoch staff hung in there and hung in there, until it became intolerable.

The staff can’t say that publicly, but I can: it becomes intolerable.

The Terrier has been publishing stories about this for the past two years in the hope that the Lyndoch board and the local community would sense that something wasn’t right.

The community is working it out. The board, however, is not.

As I wrote on Sunday night, the Lyndoch board was sent an anonymous letter by a group of staff way back in April last year, warning them of the changing culture, the growing toxicity, and the consequences.

At the time of the letter , about 80 to 100 staff had gone.

Since then, according to my sources, another 80 to 100 have left. There will be more.

I have spoken to dozens of these people and they all tell disturbing stories which have never been fully aired and can’t be without legal protection.

But I can tell you this – very few of them wanted to leave their jobs.

Many thought they would have life-long careers at Lyndoch.

All of them, bar none, miss the residents they cared for.

Please think of each of these 200 staff next week, on Tuesday 26 October, when Lyndoch Living holds its Annual General Meeting.

None of them will be there, they won’t be named and they won’t be celebrated, which is why I want to honour each and every one of them now.

So to all the nurses, personal care workers, human resources managers, finance officers, payroll staff, cleaners, kitchen hands, chefs, lifestyle workers, gardeners, volunteer coordinators, pastoral care workers, maintenance workers, accountants, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, executive staff, directors of nursing, nurse unit managers, clinical leaders and anybody who I may have missed in the long list of the fallen – thankyou.

One day I would like to gather all of you on the Civic Green so Warrnambool can say thank you too.

This loss should be intolerable to us, as a community which loves Lyndoch, and entrusts our loved ones to its care.

And it is why we fight on.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Tonight, a message to the Lyndoch board from the front line: help.

This entire Lyndoch campaign by The Terrier has had one simple motivation, which is to expect the best of care for our elderly and vulnerable residents.

That must be the priority.

But Lyndoch is drowning.

I have written so much about this, I have shown you so many photographs of the shift shortages, like the one above, and now we are in uncharted territory.

Because Lyndoch, for the first time and unlike any other nursing home in Warrnambool, is facing sanctions unless it gets its act together after failing care standards set by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.

And it’s facing this battle while suffering acute staff shortages and losing more senior staff in one sweep than, I would argue, at any time in its 60 year history.

In the past four weeks the Director of Nursing has gone. The head of May Noonan Hostel in Terang has gone.

At least one nurse unit manager has resigned.

And another two, experienced senior staff last week joined the growing list of those taking extended sick or stress leave. There will be more.

Between them, these individuals have decades of nursing experience that is not easily replaced.

Some Registered Nurses are working double shifts, with the second shift overnight when they are the only RN in the entire Lyndoch complex.

They are tired.

Other care staff are “top and tailing” – starting their shifts two hours early, or finishing two to three hours late, just to help cover the gaps.

Everybody I have contact with is exhausted or upset, but they keep pressing on because they care deeply for the residents.

I could write reams, based on the cries for help that come in each week from Lyndoch staff.

But instead I will convey the message of just one person who summed it all up.

This person has never contacted The Terrier before, but they are someone you need to hear, and we recently spoke for an hour.

They could no longer stay silent, they said, after reading that highly experienced SWHC nurse Kate Sloan had her membership application rejected by the board.

This, they said, proved the board was not listening.

It was not listening to the care staff who have been trying to hold it all together in the hope of change.

Staff have tried to raise their concerns, but if they speak up publicly, comment on this page, or approach the board directly, they are disciplined. (Test: see how many Lyndoch nursing staff comment on this post.)

Lyndoch staff surveys have come and gone.

Secret meetings between Lyndoch staff and local MPs have come and gone.

Senior staff have raised warnings in exit interviews and, in some cases, been brutally direct about an individual who cannot be named for legal reasons.

And little changes, other than staff continue to leave, the deck chairs are shuffled, and the gaps keep getting bigger.

I asked this person at the end of our long conversation what message they wanted to pass on to the Lyndoch Living board:

“I want the public and the board to know that the situation is every bit as bad as what it is.

“The staffing situation has become diabolical…the shortages are near impossible to deal with. What you are saying, it’s happening, it’s telling it like it is.

“The board need to get a sense of the immense pressure the staff are under so please, listen, come down and speak to the staff directly. Please be interested in what is actually going on.”

This begs a question, does the Lyndoch board know what is going on?

Chair Sue Cassidy (Unisexcuts), Vice Chair Kerry Nelson (ex MPower CEO), Treasurer Kane Grant (Sinclair&Wilson), Prof Rob Wallis, Lorraine Mielnik, Ron Page, Andrew Paton (WCC) – do you ask? Are you told? Have you ever met with the non-executive staff?

All good questions for the AGM on 26 October which Kate Sloan, had she been accepted as a member, could have asked, and that is precisely why she wasn’t.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Something nasty is brewing at Lyndoch Living, with senior care staff being lined up as scapegoats for its recent failings in aged care standards.

My understanding is that one of those is the Director of Nursing, who has been expected to absorb an almost indescribable amount of pressure. 

Lyndoch has already gone through one Director of Nursing in the past six years. 

If the current DON does not survive, then it will be two. Do you see something wrong here? I do.

At least one nurse unit manager has already resigned.

That individual was given an impossible task, managed to some how pull it off, but has been chucked over the cliff anyway.

Another two senior individuals who have been pulled into the gunsights have taken sick leave.

This is not where the blame must fall.

Staff have been crying out for more support, more resources, and more trained staff to help meet the needs of 240 residents.

These resources have not arrived.

The care staff at Lyndoch have been working under-resourced for too long and THIS is why it has failed the national standards.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

As I have written about so many times before, those working on the floor have been struggling to cover shifts.

New nursing staff and personal care workers have often found themselves completely overwhelmed.

Some newcomers have been thrown into situations where they are caring for an entire ward, on their own, overnight.

Similarly, just one single Registered Nurse is often in charge of the whole place overnight.

Add to this the unreliability of the nurse communication system and the failings of the resident call bell system and you have a pressure cooker full of stress, anxiety and downright fear.

This is what is happening at Lyndoch Living.

Residents cannot possibly receive the best of care in these conditions and they are conditions that the staff have been struggling under for years.

And the brewing storm is not confined to the nursing and care staff. 

My sources tell me that other areas, including the catering and kitchen staff, are also now under the hammer with cuts.

At the same time, Lyndoch is spending millions – millions – on a medical clinic that nobody asked for, and nobody wants.

As a journalist, I am not supposed to “take sides”, but I refuse to stand on the false fence of impartiality when I see wrong-doing and people about to be hurt.

So what do we do? 

Do we all just stand back and watch this unfold and leave these hard-working staff to take the rap? 

No. No, we don’t. 

What we do is once again call upon the board to stand up, to step in, and to speak up for these staff members who are a part of our community: they are us.

Silence and sitting back is no longer an option Ms Cassidy, Ms Nelson, Prof Wallis, Mr Grant, Ms Mielnik, Mr Paton and Mr Page.

Don’t look away.