Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Tonight, two photographs.

The first was taken around 1pm last Thursday 24 June and posted to Instagram by building company Nicholson Construction.

It shows members of the Lyndoch Living executive and board whooping for joy at the turning of the first sod for the $22 million medical clinic to be built on site as of this week.

Nicholson Construction is building the clinic, which as we know, despite being a $22 million project, was not put to tender.

Instead, Nicholson was appointed automatically, having previously built the $13 million Swinton Wing extension.

The second photo captures a message sent from within Lyndoch less than three hours later.

This photo shows Lyndoch’s nursing staff pleading for help to fill shifts.

They needed help to cover not one, but 12 shifts across Swinton Wing and elsewhere. Twelve.

I don’t think Lyndoch’s nursing staff were whooping for joy.

Like them, I find it hard to celebrate the turning of the first sod on a $22 million clinic that has no discernible benefit to the  vulnerable and frail residents.

A $22 million clinic also won’t fill the empty or understaffed shifts.

This is the reality of life for so many staff at Lyndoch who are either run off their feet, or stressed out, and it’s a reality that I have been reporting on for two years.

In that time, I have watched the slow wearing down and silencing of the voices who dare to question or challenge this reality.

But there is only so much you can silence.

The consequences of these staffing issues were made brutally clear by the aged care watchdog in its report which Lyndoch perhaps hoped we would never see.

As was first reported here, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission spoke of residents in pain, a resident chemically constrained without consent, of falls, of wounds, and of the staff mix being “inadequate” to care for residents.

The commission was not whooping for joy.

And yet the horrors within this report have been all but buried under the first sod of the medical clinic.

This clinic will soak up millions and millions of dollars from Lyndoch and make not one squat of difference to the daily lives of residents living just 200m away.

I can’t stop thinking about the residents in that report, just as I can’t stop thinking about the scabies, or the suffering of other residents whose stories are yet to surface publicly.

This is why we must keep pressing on, in the face of mounting pressure to shut up, to stop being a spoil sport and, instead, whoop for joy.

I will whoop for joy one day: when we have all the answers to all the questions and Lyndoch is once again fully accountable to the community it serves.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Lyndoch Living’s failure to care for the elderly and frail was kept under wraps for more than a year, during which things didn’t improve –  but got worse.

That little bombshell was wrapped up in MP Dan Tehan’s media statement issued in response to The Terrier exclusive on Tuesday night.

Mr Tehan said the nation’s top aged care watchdog visited Lyndoch in response to a complaint way back in February LAST year.

As a result, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission slapped Lyndoch with a non-compliance order for Personal and Clinical Care (aka, the very reason an aged care home exists).

Never fear, Lyndoch assured the commission at the time, they had a plan!

Fast forward 12 months to January 2021 and the commission re-visited Lyndoch to find the situation was not better, but far worse.

How is that allowed to happen?

As revealed exclusively here on Tuesday night, Lyndoch failed not one, but three out of four standards, including using chemical restraint without consent, and failing to appropriately monitor residents after serious falls.

And when it came to staffing, the commission could not have been more blunt: “(Lyndoch had) not ensured the delivery of safe care and services”.

If Lyndoch can’t get this right, what is it there for? To sponsor golf and horse racing?

Lyndoch’s three-year accreditation comes around again in August.

Lyndoch told the paper (it doesn’t respond to The Terrier) that it has an “action plan”, none of which has been detailed or publicly costed.

There is no mention of it on its website.

Once again, we are kept in the dark by a board and Lyndoch executive who are failing to deliver Lyndoch’s core business.

If The Terrier had not been tipped off about this latest report, nobody would know a thing about any of this.

“This” is the neglect that follows as a natural consequence of our nursing home not having enough staff, not having enough qualified staff, getting rid of experienced staff, and staff quitting because they are physically and emotionally exhausted.

At least 120 people have left Lyndoch in recent years, from very experienced and senior operators, down to those who only lasted a year or two.

These are the ever-growing band of alumni dismissed by Lyndoch as “disgruntled workers”, when in fact they are soldiers returned from the battlefield with warnings of what lies over the horizon.

“This” is a consequence of changing priorities where Lyndoch will overload itself with executives, but can’t fix the nurse call-bell system that is still unreliable.

“This” is a culture that will happily see Lyndoch go into massive debt for a new $24 million medical clinic based on an invisible business plan, rather than hiring more hands and hearts on the ground.

This is not the fault of the nursing and care staff: the moral collapse starts with the executive and board who set Lyndoch’s vision and priorities.

Don’t just take my word for it.

Take it from former Lyndoch Director of Nursing Penny Iddon who wrote this on the Terrier Facebook page after the breaking story:

“Poor standards of care are a direct result of poor and inadequate management oversight.

“The Board, the CEO and the senior nursing staff must take responsibility for this appalling result. The Board can no longer bury their heads in the sand and the CEO can’t keep passing the buck.

“After all, what the Auditors reported on regarding poor and outdated care practices has been allowed to continue under their watch which indicates a clear breakdown of systems, protocols and values.”

We have now seen in stark detail this week how Lyndoch is breaking down.

It has broken down in its duty of care.

And there are fears if the medical clinic goes ahead at the scale which is planned, it will break down financially.

How ironic, then, to see the Lyndoch CEO listed among the guest speakers jetting off to at an aged care forum next month in Sydney.

The topic?

Attracting and retaining new talent to revitalise your workforce.

Exclusive

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

A string of failings at Lyndoch Living has been exposed in a damning report by the national aged care watchdog.

A report released by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission in March – but which I was alerted to only today – lays out a shocking series of inadequacies recorded after a two-day visit by the commission to Lyndoch in January.

The commission is the peak federal body for assessing and accrediting aged care homes and for handling complaints.

Its assessment team found Lyndoch was non-compliant in three out of four key measures for resident care and staffing.

A separate report released at the same time shows the Lyndoch Hostel section passed on all measures, but an 11-page report into other, unidentified, sections of Lyndoch reveals a story of wounds, falls, pain, lack of consent, outdated records and crying out for help.

The report focusses on five specific residents, and it makes for heart-breaking reading.

Here are some of its findings:

Resident one, who was living with severe dementia, experienced “breakthrough” pain levels daily for three weeks without receiving any further pain medication, pain assessment, monitoring or evaluation;

A pain assessment plan set out by a specialist team was not followed;

The specialist’s recommendation that a pain medication patch be increased was not followed;

This same resident also had several wounds which were not adequately overseen by staff;

In regard to one of the wounds, all four management plans failed to record if the wound was getting better or worse, with boxes on wound size either unchanged or left blank;

Another resident was being given antipsychotic drugs “as required” – which is defined as chemical restraint – with no proof of consent:

“The representative of the [resident] told the Assessment Team that they had not provided consent and were unaware of any potential side effects of the use of the medication,” the report says.

A third resident had a fall and was hospitalised overnight with a significant laceration but, upon returning to Lyndoch the next day, was not reviewed for pain or possible brain injury:

“The Assessment Team found that staff did not undertake a timely review of the consumer’s pain on return from hospital and did not undertake neurological observations.”

This same resident later developed shoulder pain, but an order for stronger pain relief was not processed until two days later, with a GP review three days later.

A fourth resident, who lives with dementia, had an unwitnessed fall, but was not assessed for pain or a possible head injury.

Two days later, the same resident had two more falls which “qualifies” for a CT scan, that occurred.

The report says Lyndoch refuted the assessment team’s statements about this incident and also questioned the accuracy of its findings.

The team, however, stood by its report.

It says “the key points were timeliness of pain review following a fall and whether staff undertook neurological observations. Particularly …. for unwitnessed falls where the consumer could have hit their head…”

A review of records of a fifth resident, who was on psychotropic medication, found the medication records were out of date.

As a result of these incidents, Lyndoch was found to be non-compliant in standards for Personal Care and Clinical Care.

It was also found to be non-compliant in Human Resources and had “not ensured the delivery of safe care and services”.

The assessment team said it witnessed staff rushing tasks and staff walking past a resident who was calling out for help without stopping to offer support or assistance.

A review of the roster across a two-week period found some shifts were unfilled.

It also found failings in infection prevention and control, including:

poor use of personal protective equipment by some staff;

social distancing not always being adhered to by some staff and;

not taking all reasonable steps to prevent visitors who do not meet entry requirements from entering the facility.

Staff shortages and a lack of suitably qualified staff also came under fire:

“the skills of the current mix of staff delivering the care are inadequate and are not meeting the current needs of (residents).”

So there it is in black and white: Lyndoch is failing in its core business of caring for our elderly and frail.

It is failing some of the most vulnerable people in our community and yet there are still those within Lyndoch who will deny, deflect and head to the May Races.

This is not the fault of the exhausted Lyndoch staff.

The buck does not stop with them: it stops with those who decide the priorities of Lyndoch.

Right now, the number one priority for Lyndoch is building a $24 million, 3000sq/m medical clinic with no clear benefit to the residents.

This is how disgracefully lop-sided things have become and how far Lyndoch has drifted from its core purpose.

And so we have reports of wounds, falls, pain, missing records, soreness, sadness and crying out for help.

This is not happening in a private aged care home deep in the outskirts of Melbourne: it is happening in Warrnambool, in a place owned by us, the community.

Why has Lyndoch not told us about this report, apologised for its failings and pledged to do better?

Do we simply shrug our shoulders and say “that’s how it is in aged care” and turn away?

I can’t turn away and I know you can’t too.

We have to be the voice of the voiceless and refuse to accept silence as a solution.

[The commission has set down seven areas in which Lyndoch must improve to avoid any risk to its accreditation. You can read those here. It should be noted the commission says Lyndoch has challenged or refuted many of its findings. You can download the full report here.]

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Let’s get straight to it. Lyndoch Living is a registered charity that has no right to spend more than $150,000* sponsoring Warrnambool’s Grand Annual steeplechase.

In fact, this immoral deal between our community-owned aged care home and the Warrnambool Racing Club makes a lie of an important promise made by Lyndoch to us 10 years ago.

Let me explain.

Contrary to recent reports, there is no “commercial arm” of Lyndoch that will provide private money for Lyndoch to sponsor the Grand Annual Steeplechase for another three years, having already sponsored it for three.

The race is being sponsored by Waterfront Living, which are the up-market retirement apartments built by Lyndoch near the Hopkins River bridge and which first went on sale in 2014.

Waterfront Living was built by Lyndoch using public money, is still managed by Lyndoch, and remains a full subsidiary of Lyndoch – the board and CEO who look after Lyndoch are also in charge of Waterfront Living.

Waterfront is not some sort of separate, private entity that gets to spend its money wherever it likes. It is a part of Lyndoch, which is a charity.

And here comes the crunch.

Why did Lyndoch build these apartments? To make money to put back into Lyndoch.

Former Lyndoch CEO Rhys Boyle, who retired in 2015, made this very promise to the community when the apartments were built.

This is what he said at the time:

“Every cent made by this project will go back into our business to keep it operational.”

Every cent.

And then this:

“This development isn’t about making profit for profit’s sake. Lyndoch as an organisation can’t be benevolent to our residents if we’re not making enough money to put back into the business.”

 

I added the bold type, because I need to shout these words from the page.

We are being duped.

We now have clear proof – from the very top of Lyndoch – that the money coming in to Lyndoch from the apartment sales was never intended to go toward a horse race.

It was to go toward caring for the residents.

There is no possible justification for such a sponsorship deal, especially when Lyndoch is operating at a loss, which it has done for four of the past five years.

Any money from Waterfront – every cent – is to go back into Lyndoch so the hard-working staff can provide the best care to residents, including things like new, comfortable chairs, quality food, good coffee and yes, a steady supply of sheets, towels and face-washers.

I, for one, have had enough of the spin and the failure of the board to scrutinise every inch of Lyndoch’s spending on our behalf.

The board, if it needs reminding, is there to represent the community who still own Lyndoch, just as we have for more than 60 years.

The board is our voice and they are letting us down.

If there is one thing about our community, perhaps because we are surrounded by dairy farms, it’s that we can smell the scent of bullshite and we know when things are not right.

Sponsoring a horse race with Lyndoch money is not right.

As the ultimate owners of Lyndoch, it is time for the community to speak up on behalf of those who can’t, because if we don’t, we are letting down our loved ones in Lyndoch and we are letting down all of the residents and their families.

You can contact the Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers, the Hon Luke Donnellan, here: luke.donnellan@parliament.vic.gov.au

You can contact the Lyndoch chair, Kerry Nelson, here: knelson@mpower.org.au

And you can contact the Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission here: https://www.acnc.gov.au/raise-concern

I wish I could say this was the end of the Lyndoch stories, but there is still a long way to go before everything is out on the table.

More soon.

* the cost of the sponsorship has never been declared by Lyndoch, but is believed to be around $80,000-$100,000 for each three-year sponsorship.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

With aged care under the pump, it’s hard to believe Lyndoch Living spends tens of thousands of dollars sponsoring the Grand Annual Steeplechase and hiring a marquee at the Warrnambool May Races.

Details of the deal are not public, but it means potentially around $160,000 – if not more – will have been spent on supporting gambling via race sponsorship and corporate hospitality for selected Lyndoch staff, guests and residents.

When did supporting gambling become a core value of Lyndoch aged care, which is a registered charity and a public benevolent institution?

Just as with Lyndoch’s plan to build a multi-million-dollar medical centre, the appropriateness of this deal is also the subject of complaints to the Australian Charities and Investment Commission, which will make an assessment.

The close ties between Lyndoch and the Warrnambool Racing Club also raise potential conflicts of interest, which I will get to in a moment.

First, however, it has emerged that while members of Lyndoch’s hierarchy were enjoying the May Races this year, life was less glamorous back at Lyndoch itself.

The daughter of one resident was, at that time, spending each day in Lyndoch to watch her Mum because she had taken to falls and there was not, allegedly, enough staff to keep an eye on her.

To protect the privacy of the resident, I am not revealing this woman’s identity, but I have spoken with her several times and she is a highly credible source.

The woman in question took a week off work to spend seven days straight, from 7am in the morning until 10pm at night, in her mother’s room at Lyndoch because, she told me, she could see the staff were “literally running” to keep up.

Many staff, she says, were not able to take their breaks.

The situation was compounded by the wing being in lockdown due to an outbreak of influenza, which meant an additional burden on staff, such as feeding all residents in their rooms.

While the woman could see the staff were “doing their best”, it was clear that if she wanted a close eye kept on her Mum while the doctors sorted out her medications, it would be better to watch her herself.

Spending hours each day with her Mum was a commitment she was prepared to make, but then she scrolled through Facebook and saw Lyndoch posts of CEO Doreen Power and chair Kerry Nelson at the May Races.

Judging by the Facebook posts, some Lyndoch executives including Ms Power didn’t attend just one day of the carnival, but at least two.

The woman, to put it plainly, was absolutely furious.

She arranged to meet directly with Ms Power to express her concerns around Lyndoch’s handling of the lockdown, the alleged staff shortages and the impact on her mother’s care, but, she says, left that meeting far from satisfied with the CEO’s alleged reactions and responses.

The woman then contacted the chair, Ms Nelson, who she described as sympathetic, as was the Director of Nursing Julie Baillie, but she ultimately came away feeling “very concerned” by the overall response of Lyndoch to her complaints around duty of care.

I asked both Ms Power and Ms Nelson to comment on this woman’s story. Neither responded.

This snapshot of life inside Lyndoch during the 2019 May Race Week brings me back to the question of what is Lyndoch Living doing at the races in the first place?

Were staff on paid time or personal leave? Perhaps this is another example of Lyndoch’s new “core business” in action.

I do know that the relationship between the Warrnambool Racing Club and Lyndoch has become much closer since former club CEO Peter Downs joined the Lyndoch board in September 2016.

It was just four months’ after Mr Downs joined the board that Lyndoch announced its first, three-year sponsorship deal of the Grand Annual Steeplechase.

At the time, the board was at pains to point out that Mr Downs – who had a very clear conflict of interest – excused himself from anything to do with that decision.

This must mean the Lyndoch Living board came up with the whole idea itself.

Lyndoch has since re-signed its sponsorship deal for 2020 and Mr Downs, who now lives in Melbourne and works for Moonee Valley, remains on the Lyndoch board.

The links, however, don’t stop there.

As I wrote in April, Mr Downs and Ms Power also have shares in at least one racehorse, Strategic Force.

Any potential, perceived or actual conflicts of interest there?

Apparently not.

It is these tangled webs and inexplicable decisions that have so many of us outside of Lyndoch worrying about its direction and priorities.

And it is why we will keep asking questions of those in charge, no matter what hurdles are thrown in our way.

The final instalment – before I pick up the thread after Christmas – is coming soon.

In the meantime, I am starting a Foxy Fighting Fund. If you would like to make a small contribution, you can do so below.

The Foxy Fighting Fund