Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Lyndoch Living can be a mind-bender, it really can.

Take, for example, the fact that Lyndoch will appeal the refusal of a permit for its big corporate sign.

Lyndoch has decided to challenge the decision by the Warrnambool City Council through VCAT.

This, you may recall, is the corporate sign that was installed just over a year ago by Lyndoch without a permit because it didn’t apply for one.

It then applied retrospectively for a permit in a classic “do it, then ask later” manoeuvre, but it was rejected by the WCC because the sign is too large under planning laws.

End of story? No way!

So now more aged care funds will be spent by Lyndoch on nurses, oops, lawyers to appeal a sign that was erected illegally in the first place.

And here is the mind-bending, “this-could-only-happen-in-Warrnambool” part:

Lyndoch is fighting a decision made by the staff of one of the board members of Lyndoch.

Andrew Paton, as we know, is a board member of Lyndoch and the Director of City Growth at WCC.

Mr Paton’s staff, who I assume he trusts to know the law, made the decision to reject this sign.

But Lyndoch is now spending aged care funds to fight that decision.

And the council – which employs Mr Paton – will spend ratepayers’ funds, in a roundabout way, defending that decision.

My head hurts.

My head also hurts, and perhaps yours does too, when I see the barrage of public relations pouring out of Lyndoch on its Facebook page at the moment without so much as a whiff of an update on how it’s dealing with its multiple challenges.

Last Tuesday, for example, there was a pile of happy snaps from the “grand opening” of new works at May Noonan Hostel in Terang.

It was all speeches and smiles, but not a word about May Noonan in July failing seven out of the eight national aged care standards – or almost half of the 42 benchmarks –  and the 19 specific areas it must address to avoid sanctions.

There was not a peep of an update on how the squad that has finally been assembled to help with May Noonan is actually performing.

Nothing to see here folks! Pass the microphone!

And on this same day that the Lyndoch CEO and Chair were celebrating the new furnishings at May Noonan, the Lyndoch nursing home (Lake Lodge and Audrey Prider Centre), had one of its worst days for staff shortages – about half of the staff required.

It was, I am reliably informed, a nightmare.

Some Registered Nurses at Lyndoch are now working nine to 12 hour shifts to help try and cover the shortages.

This, as we know, is a direct consequence of a culture that has taken root and eroded Lyndoch and left so many good staff on the scrapheap, wondering what they did wrong and why – after decades of service – they are being made to carry the can.

We know it, we read it, we hear it and we feel sick about it and I feel even sicker when I see the pap now streaming out of Lyndoch which is designed to cheer everyone up – as all good propaganda is designed to do –  but doesn’t fix anything.

What will fix it and turn Lyndoch around are serious interrogations by the authorities with the power to act, such as WorkSafe, which as of last week is now involved because of serious concerns around staff fatigue.

The Annual General Meeting this Tuesday is an opportunity for some truths.

We have lodged our 31 questions; let’s see if we get even a single answer.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

As the year comes to a close, I wish I could do more for those who contact me about Lyndoch Living.

Whenever I write about Lyndoch aged care, I get a stream of messages from readers, most of whom thank me for just listening, even if I can’t help.

People care about Lyndoch and its residents, including the staff who have to go to extraordinary lengths just to get a message to me, for fear of being “caught” talking to The Terrier, but also the families of residents, and friends of residents.

I find so many of these messages heartbreaking and I feel powerless, because I can’t fix it.

All I can do is tell you – the wider community – what I have learnt and what I have investigated and hope that you, like me, won’t look away.

Like this message from a reader about the new $13 million Swinton Wing extension:

“..residents from (Tomlinson) have now been moved to the second floor of the new “dementia building” (my words). This means that all ambulant dementia residents are now “trapped” upstairs with no free access to an outside area where they can feel the breeze or sun on their face, walk on a “return” path through an enclosed garden area, and see birds hopping around.

“They now have no chickens to care for and secured outside areas for unsupervised activities are now nonexistent. ….. the new building is very impressive and state of the art, but soulless and clinical.

“Whoever thought that this was an improvement to the quality of residents’ lives has no understanding of the ageing and their needs. My alarm bells are going off and I feel this needs further investigation. Please.”

Please.

This is the new Lyndoch, I have learned, where pictures are not allowed on the new walls of the new rooms and the new TV that comes with the new room is the one a resident MUST use, even if they don’t know how to work the freakin’ new remote control.

And then there are the messages about “the rash”.

I have had so many messages about a “rash” that has been coming and going through the Audrey Prider Centre at Lyndoch for six months and I can – at last – write about it because the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) has taken up the issue on behalf of their members – the nursing staff on the front line.

In a letter to Lyndoch last week, the ANMF has asked the question up front: is this rash scabies? And if it is, what is being done about it, and what has been done to support residents and staff?

The union has asked for a response by tomorrow (Dec 4).

If this rash is not scabies – I have since heard that it ISN’T – then what is it?

It is enough to have staff and family of some residents demanding more answers.

Another worry that has filtered through to The Terrier these past weeks is the mobile “black spots” within Lyndoch that means families calling after-hours to check on sick loved ones are finding the phones are either not answered (because nursing staff are in a black spot) or the call drops out.

All of those millions spent on expanding Lyndoch – and adding an IT specialist to the executive team – and the phone system is unreliable.

Perhaps instead of worrying about awards and nominations and getting its name up in fairy lights, Lyndoch needs to make sure it responds to these concerns – and I am only able to share a few of them here.

Speaking of lights, the big, new, illuminated, illegal corporate logo on Swinton Wing will be approved retrospectively by the WCC, but will not be lit up.

The lighting breaks the planning laws, but it took neighbours to tell them that.

Given the WCC head of planning is on the Lyndoch board, we can only assume that he had no idea this sign was going ahead.

I really hope Lyndoch receives a refund on the LED.

And I really hope that those who have concerns and fears and worries about Lyndoch will keep speaking up and find the strength to stand up, to light up, knowing that we – the community – has their back.

On we go.

[This is my last post for 2020. Thankyou so much to all of the terriers who have helped The Terrier to keep going in more ways than one. You are the voices behind this voice and I couldn’t do any of it without you.]

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Update: Turns out the new, swish piece of illuminated corporate branding at Lyndoch Living is illegal – there is no permit for this sign to be installed on the side of Swinton Wing.

As readers know, this sign, which is bright-white at night (disclaimer: I live not far away, but these photos were taken by another nearby resident), was installed last week by Cassign, which is the business owned and operated by the husband of the new Lyndoch board chair, Sue Cassidy.

We still don’t know if all the signage works undertaken by Cassign at Lyndoch Living these past months went to tender (Steve Moore, did you have any luck finding out?), but I do know that there is no council permit for this one.

This means a permit must be sought retrospectively from the Warrnambool City Council.

How does Lyndoch think it can get away with it?

Meanwhile, as the corporatisation of Lyndoch rolls on, I continue to get calls and emails and messages every second day from families worried about staff shortages, staff exhaustion and the impact of both on some residents.

Yes, yes, we all know these complaints can be taken here, and reported there, but what happens as a result? Nothing.

Nothing seems to change and the staff become more tired, and families of those residents affected become more frustrated.

I know not all families are affected and we all know that Lyndoch’s hard working staff do the very best they can, but the resignations keep coming – from the nursing staff to those working at Waterfront Living.

I hear about them all, and I despair that nothing happens to fix it and turn things around.

All I see is more corporate branding, more executive appointments, more staff surveys, and fluff stories about Lyndoch trying to win awards.

Who will step up? Who is going to step forward and say, enough of this?

This whole story is much bigger than a sign on a building, but that illegal, unnecessary and expensive sign – to me – sums up the changing priorities of Lyndoch Living, the arrogance, and a corporate culture that cares more about image than substance.

We own Lyndoch, we must never forget that, but we have lost control of its destiny and we no longer recognise its soul and I am not sure how we can reconnect with both, but every time I speak to those families and workers who are in the thick of it, I know we have to keep trying.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Well blow me down if the Cassign team was not back at Lyndoch Living today installing a huge, illuminated sign on the front of the new Swinton Wing.

Just last night, as you know, I wrote about the perceived conflict of interest between Cassign and Lyndoch chair Sue Cassidy, who is married to the owner of Cassign, David Cassidy.

I wonder if Lyndoch put this latest slice of non-essential corporate branding out to tender, because this sign is not a little A-frame at risk of blowing over in the Warrnambool wind – it needed a cherry picker and three guys to install.

We will most likely never know, because Lyndoch no longer tells the community such things.

But what I can confirm is, as flagged last night, the Lyndoch at-home gardening team is being dismissed as of late January because they are costing Lyndoch money.

These are the hard-working men and women who visit people’s homes to mow lawns, whipper snip, and edge garden beds with a skilful eye well beyond my own.

They are now dispensable to Lyndoch, even if they were indispensable to those who used the service.

The home gardening team costs Lyndoch around $100,000 a year, and so they are out.

Be gone ye faithful gardeners, Lyndoch has snazzy signs to install via a cherry picker!

I was thinking we could offer some suggestions as to where Lyndoch could whipper-snip its costs to save the gardeners, and we could start with the number of executives.

As I wrote last night, a brand new executive position has just been filled and, as it turns out, another two will be advertised in January:

– Operations Manager: Organisational Development

– Organisational Development Consultant

Good grief.

An organisational consultant to assist the organisational manager who reports to another manager, who reports to the CEO…

At last count, Lyndoch had around 60 administrative staff.

The good people of Seymour know all about top-heavy administration, which unfolded at their hospital some years ago, and was one of several upsets challenged by the local community that led to a complete upheaval in 2012.

The CEO of Lyndoch was the CEO of Seymour Health at the time.

Lyndoch also sponsors the Grand Annual Steeplechase horse race, which was ostensibly in the hope that such advertising would help sell the waterfront apartments.

It didn’t work.

The last of these apartments was flogged off recently in a fire sale for $100,000 less than the listed price in 2014.

Lyndoch also hosts a corporate marquee for three days at the May Racing Carnival – at a cost of around $40,000 –  and would have done so again this year had it not been for Covid-19.

And yet the gardening staff are being cut.

We see what is happening here. We all see it. And we are not looking away.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Oh, the tangled web. Warrnambool can be a very, very small place when it comes to who knows who, and who ends up where, how, and why.

Which is why I asked Lyndoch Living this week how it manages the potential conflicts of interest around Lyndoch board member and now Lyndoch chair, Sue Cassidy.

I asked this because Ms Cassidy, who joined the Lyndoch board in 2017, is married to David Cassidy who operates Cassign: a very successful signage company that has operated in Warrnambool since 1983.

Cassign has done a lot of signage for Lyndoch Living these past few years, including the Lyndoch bus and the new signage at the Warrnambool Medical Clinic that, last year, was bought by Lyndoch Living for $1.3 million.

Cassign also provided the installation work for the swish flat-screen TV that now sits at the drive-through entrance to Lyndoch Living.

Most recently, as I understand it, Cassign replaced old signage outside the new Swinton Wing with a sparkling new sign that, among other things, directs people to the “Lyndoch Medical Hub”.

I know more than I probably need to know about Cassign, because I have raised the issue of potential conflict of interest before, when Ms Cassidy was a Warrnambool City Councillor and voted on issues to do with racehorse training on our local beaches.

At that time, I questioned how Ms Cassidy could be part of any such discussions when Cassign sponsored horse races in Warrnambool.

In response, Mr Cassidy sent me a series of long and passionate emails setting out why – in essence – my stories were all a crock and there was no potential conflict of interest and his wife was a modern woman who ran her own business, while he ran his.

I saw it differently – and I still do. Which brings me back to Lyndoch Living.

This week I  asked Lyndoch Living (and Ms Cassidy) whether Lyndoch put out a tender for its signage work and, given Cassign has done at least some of this work to date, how it managed any perceived conflicts of interest.

The answer, as always, was no answer.

We shall have to make up our own minds.

In the meantime, you may recall that a couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about Lyndoch looking for yet another senior executive to add to its ballooning executive team which has grown from 37 in 2017 to almost 60 in 2019.

This newly created position – Director of Research, Enterprise and Education – was worth more than $100k a year, was advertised only internally and for only around 10 days, leading me to speculate that someone was already lined up for the job.

That someone, I took a punt, was Julie Bertram, a retired director from South-West TAFE, who this year has been filling a maternity leave position in the Lyndoch executive.

Lo and behold, guess who today was announced as the winning candidate for the job? Ms Bertram.

While Ms Bertram is no doubt perfect for the role, the bigger question is why Lyndoch’s executive team seems to have an ever-increasing number of new staff in roles that, between them, must cost a fortune.

For what purpose and for what return to Lyndoch and its residents?

This latest position comes on the heels of Lyndoch recording a $1.9 million deficit – its fifth deficit in five years.

It also comes amid unconfirmed reports that Lyndoch’s at-home gardening staff will soon be dismissed because they are costing Lyndoch money.

And it comes as we start the countdown to Lyndoch’s full financial figures for 2020 being released in January through the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission.

I wonder if the food bill for Lyndoch will have increased from the paltry average of $13 per resident, per day, in 2019?

The silence from Lyndoch is always deafening when it comes to my questions, but rest assured that I will keep asking.

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