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Rural aged care providers are stepping up to meet sweeping reforms and in Victoria’s south-east, one small service is showing what that looks like on the ground.
In Foster, Prom Country Aged Care sits at the centre of a tight-knit health precinct, where the local hospital, GP clinic and community health service share the same stretch of land.
About 70 per cent of residents come from the surrounding Corner Inlet region with many spending their entire lives in the area.
“We don’t have another facility close to us,” says CEO Paula Gibb. “So we do have that really local flavour.”
For residents Malcolm Ellis and Robyn Speers, that has shaped their experience in aged care.
“It still feels like home,” Ellis says. “You’re surrounded by people you know… that makes a big difference.”
“It’s not like you’re going somewhere completely new,” Speers adds. “There’s a sense of comfort in that.”
Inside the home, staff are overwhelmingly local, often caring for people they have known for years, or who share mutual ties.
“They know our residents really well,” Gibb says. “You can hear them laughing down the corridors… it’s really quite fun.”
That work has seen Prom Country Aged Care nominated in Ageing Australia’s national You are ACE! Awards in the Making a Difference category, recognising the leadership of Gibb and her team through a period of significant change.
Ageing Australia CEO Tom Symondson says rural providers are critical, particularly as the effects of reforms take shape in the years to come.
“These services are absolutely essential,” he says. “They are deeply connected to the people they support and often go above and beyond to deliver high-quality care.”
“They understand their communities in a way larger systems simply can’t replicate. Without them, people simply wouldn’t have access to the support they need close to home,” he says.
Like many regional providers, Prom Country Aged Care has been navigating the demands of sector reform with limited resources.
“Being a small standalone not-for-profit, we don’t have the backing of a big central office,” Gibb says.
“A lot of the reform changes and education for the staff have been driven by myself and the executive team… because we didn’t have any other resources to utilise.”
Workforce pressures have also been front of mind, particularly in a regional setting where attracting and retaining staff can be more difficult. In response, the organisation has focused on building its local workforce while also bringing in overseas staff to support care delivery.
At the same time, new systems have been introduced to better understand the experiences of residents and their families ensuring feedback is acted on.
The approach reflects a broader shift in how the organisation is planning for the future -balancing compliance with care.
“It’s about embedding everything we’ve implemented and making it part of business as usual,” Gibb says.
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