the Aged Care Today magazine featured articles

“Aged care really interested me because I wanted to help make the most for people in the latter stages of their lives,” said Chris.

“I felt it was a really important and undervalued part of the nursing profession.”

Joining Meath Care in January 2022 after eight years as CEO of a single-site provider, he embarked on a new strategic plan, just as COVID-19 was making its mark on Western Australia.

“We had been largely untouched by the pandemic until February 2022, so having COVID-19 within our community magnified workforce issues,” he said.

“The biggest area of concern for me going forward was how to retain a skilled workforce and how to maximise the level of care our staff provide.”

Meath Care runs three sites in Perth, two of them residential aged care homes co-located with retirement living plus a stand-alone retirement living village.

While the new strategic plan considered all three sites, implementation has been focused on the Kingsley site in the first instance.

“Workforce informed the entire strategy,” said Chris. “Our key aim was to shift the way we work from a service model to a partnership care model.

“We knew new regulations were coming later in 2022, which meant direct care would need to increase by 20 per cent, but we also knew the funding model would change and we would get funding to cover it.

“One of the areas of need that is often missed with limited workforce is caring for the psycho-social-emotional wellbeing of residents, so with extra worker time dedicated to individuals, our planning became focused on how we could make the best use of that time to address this need.

“We created a partnership care model where we encourage and empower our staff to develop relationships with the residents, rather than be task-oriented, which has proven enormously beneficial for residents as well as staff.”

The model was implemented at Meath Care on the back of specific training and support, especially for frontline staff, and has resulted in more personalised and caring interactions with between staff and residents, while staff now have a greater level of job satisfaction.

This is demonstrated in an outstanding reduction in staff turnover since January 2022 – from 50 per cent to 19 per cent at Como, and from more than 30 per cent to just eight per cent at Kingsley.

One key focus for the relationship care model was mealtimes. Carers now spend more time developing relationships with residents over the mealtime experience, rather than just serving meals and clearing plates.

At the Kingsley site, the large dining room on the first floor which accommodates 44 residents was divided into two separate areas, which has made the dining experience less noisy and more intimate, less like a catering hall and more like a dining room.

Due to its success, dining rooms are now being made smaller on the other two levels, for the remaining residents.

Elevating the dining experience was undertaken as part of Maggie Beer’s Big Mission project – a multi-dimensional project that looked at how to improve food in aged care and how the physical environment could be enhanced to support health and wellbeing.

The project revamped the menu from both a nutritional and a taste perspective. With the benefit of having the Maggie Beer Foundation and a dietician involved from the start, new meals were trialled with residents who were able to inform on the changes to the menu.

“The nexus between our strategy and mealtimes is that it’s a real opportunity to create meaningful interactions with residents – from talking about food choices to asking about their day,” said Chris.

“Resident satisfaction levels with mealtimes has doubled, which we know through independent surveys conducted that give us very candid responses.”

Other changes inside including repainting the interiors, acoustic panelling, new soft furnishings and better lighting, while externally landscaping was done to the central courtyard and mural artists worked with residents on an artwork.

Led by Josh Byrne, a presenter on ABC TV’s Gardening Australia, the outdoor area was transformed into an inviting, usable space for residents and their guests.

With resident input, it now includes thriving plants including sensory herbs like mint, basil and rosemary (which residents pick for cooking activities), a BBQ, a new pergola and additional outdoor furniture.

“We’re really proud of the transformation at Meath Care, especially how our relationship care model has been embraced,” said Chris.

“We’ve gone from a situation where 75 per cent of staff interactions were task-oriented, to flipping that around to now having 75 per cent of staff interactions around meaningful relationship building with residents.

“That’s a win for residents, their loved ones and our workforce.”