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.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

That is eco-activist Colleen Hughson’s thumb and that is one very clean rock pool at Shelly Beach, near Thunder Point and both are worth a special mention tonight.

I want to acknowledge a small moral victory by Colleen, (who doesn’t know I am writing this, but who is surely one of the most determined people on this planet), and the diligent beach clean up crew who have been pushing for years for Wannon Water to clean up its act.

Ever since zillions of plastic nurdles landed in the ocean via the sewerage system in 2017 by some assbob who has never been held to account, Colleen and other like-minded souls have been pressing Wannon Water to lift its game.

This is because it wasn’t only nurdles, but a whole pile of other gunk that was making its way through the Wannon Water treatment plant and out into the ocean.

Cotton buds, tossed down the toilet by other, unthinking assbobs, are one major offender.

Another is a delightful thing called a fatberg, which is a stinky, smelly, fatty, hairy blob that forms in the scum of the Wannon Water treatment plant and – if not caught – ends up floating in the rockpools of Shelly Beach.

The Pick Up Sticks and Good Will Nurdle Hunting crew knew this stuff must have been coming via Wannon Water, but Wannon Water ducked and weaved and pretty much denied it was doing anything other than an exemplary job at catching the smelly gunk before it was flushed out to sea.

Wannon Water’s take on it was that fatbergs and any other gunk showing up at Shelly Beach must have been from elsewhere or it was “old” stuff being flushed back to shore. (Spin, rinse, repeat).

Rarely did their screening system fail, they said, when I toured the plant last October.

Except Colleen and the beach clean-up crew knew it was failing.

They could see the screens failed when they became completely blocked and overflowed (just like any sieve or kitchen drain).

And it failed every time the two screens, including a fine screen, had to each be taken out manually, scraped into a wheelbarrow or vacuumed, and put back again.

How such a clunky system involving a wheelbarrow and a vacuum cleaner was ever considered good enough in the 21st century is beyond me, but it was, for years and years.

After the nurdle spill in November 2017, Wannon Water announced plans to improve the screening system as part of its plant upgrade, but these changes were slow in coming.

A second, manual fine screen was finally added earlier this year, and a fully automated, $1.1 million screen was installed in April …. and no wonder.

Because what happened in between times was a big, fat pollution abatement notice was issued to Wannon Water by the EPA in February.

This notice confirmed what was always suspected: the manual screens were not always doing their job.

In fact when the EPA visited the treatment plant last November, the screens were 100% blocked and effluent, it said, may have flowed over the top.

Whats more, the EPA went back to the plant in January this year and actually saw the effluent overtopping the screens.

Not only that, the EPA visited the rock pools at Shelly Beach that same day and, guess what?

They found five fat balls and many smaller pieces of fat in just one rockpool: slam dunk proof of a failing system.

 

This is a story that I wanted to write two months ago, but it got bumped in the Covid 19 news whirl.

But it’s an important vindication of the hard work and pressure and activism by Colleen and the dozens of other activists who form the clean up crews: they were right all along, and now the EPA notice proved it.

The EPA notice ordered Wannon Water to fix its screening system by no later than 15 June this year, which it has done, and the Shelly Beach rockpools are the cleanest they have been in years.

There is no doubt in my mind that the sustained pressure of Colleen and the beach clean up crew has helped this to happen.

And yet, even now, Wannon Water can’t quite bring itself to say just that.

“The manual screening system, installed in November 2017, has performed extremely well and has been very effective,” managing director Andrew Jeffers said to me via email.

No, actually, it didn’t perform “extremely well” and it should have been improved years ago.

The fight to clean up our beaches from plastics and pollution goes on, but the small victories and vindications are worth celebrating and so, as Rod Stewart would say, tonight’s the night.