BV Lifestyle - Winter 2022

I have really seen the values of Barunga Village in action – people have definitely shown me the true meaning behind ‘show kindness’ and ‘support connections’, and I have been very impressed by the constant ‘striving to improve’ that I have witnessed thus far.

I have made many new friends since I have become a Port Broughton resident just under four months ago, and I can honestly say that I am more socially connected here in this beautiful town than I have ever been living in bigger cities and towns all around Australia. Thank you to all of you who have gone out of your way to make me feel so welcome.

During the first four months in my role as Chief Executive Officer, I have been busy learning about all aspects of Barunga Village.

As well as meeting with the Board of Directors, I have also met with many staff and consumers across our Retirement, Community and Residential services. I have heard and seen many great things about Barunga Village, and I am very confident that we are well placed to face the ongoing challenges ahead.

Our key focus priorities over the coming months will be to transition through several major changes that are being introduced by the Federal Government in response to the Royal Commission in Aged Care.

These changes are designed to increase funding, as well as ensure minimum minutes of Registered Nurses and care staff in a residential home. We welcome these changes, and have already started revising the roster to ensure that we can meet these minimum care minutes.

We also look forward to the new Government’s further announcements regarding increased wages for the wonderful staff who provide day-to-day care for House Members at Barunga Homes and Barunga Community Care clients.

I am currently working with my team to review our operational plans which set out how we will implement the Strategic Plan, and I will give you an update on this in my next report.

Of course, whilst these changes are occurring, it is business as usual, which these days includes living with the reality of COVID-19.

Thank you to everyone in the Barunga Village community for taking the many and repeated steps required to keep yourselves and each other safe. We are in the

midst of flu season and I really encourage you all to get your flu vaccination, as well as your fourth COVID-19 booster shot (when it is available to you). Whilst I always encourage you to speak with your direct service area first, you can also contact me directly on 08 8635 0684 or email me at elizabethc@barungavillage. com.au.

I hope you stay safe and keep warm.

It has now been seventeen months since the Royal Commission delivered its final report into Aged Care. In their report the Commissioners noted that ‘inadequate staffing levels, skills mix and training are principal causes of substandard care in the current system’, and delivered a number of recommendations to address these.

It was noted that improving the quality of education and training for the workforce, particularly work-based placements in aged care contexts, is likely to be a leading indicator for improvements to the delivery of aged care services.

I believe that there are six elements that are the essential underpinnings of a high quality learning environment. These include: 1. An organisational culture

that values learning 2. Best practice clinical practice 3. A positive learning environment 4. An effective health serviceeducator relationship 5. Effective communication processes 6. Appropriate resources and facilities As you can see from these elements, there is considerable overlap between the things that contribute to a great learning environment and the things that are likely to be important to delivering high quality services.

For us here at Barunga Village to achieve this high-quality learning environment we need to have structured conversations about the practical things we need to do, to achieve the objectives for the six elements of the

framework. These structured conversations need to involve Managers and frontline staff and would provide a strong foundation for improvement.

Barunga Village has recognised the importance of providing the right style of education and training for each individual and are continuing to evaluate education and training resources both externally and internally.

On Monday 14 February 2022, I welcomed four new Trainees to our Traineeship Program.

Denelle Boyd, Aynsley Samuel, Jessica Hendriks and Cassandra Anderson-Peters commenced their 12-month training to obtain Certificate III in Individual Support (Ageing).

I look forward to supporting them as they begin their careers in the ever-growing aged care industry.

I hope you are all managing to keep warm during these extremely cold winter days that are upon us. Our volunteers have enjoyed spending time indoors with our House Members, not only doing our regular activities but also enjoying many celebrations.

Our Evelyn House Members cooked up a lovely morning tea to help celebrate National Volunteers Week in May and invited our volunteers and myself to spend the morning with them. We had a wonderful time and the food was delicious.

Chief Executive Officer, Elizabeth Carroll hosted a meet and greet morning tea for our

incredible volunteer team. It was a great opportunity to grow connections between our staff and volunteers and pay tribute to their hard work and contribution to our organisation.

Our volunteer team have a full schedule of events planned for the next few months. They will be hosting a Barunga Village Commonwealth games with our individual houses competing against each other and finals will be held in August.

Volunteers will also attend our annual mandatory training day in September and a volunteers catch up barbeque is planned for when the weather gets a bit warmer.

Many of you may have seen our campaign advertising for transport drivers, we have a fabulous team of volunteer drivers who enjoy giving back to our local community and we would love to expand our team.

If you would like any information on becoming a volunteer driver or a volunteer at Barunga Village please feel free to give me a call on 08 8635 0529 and I will guide you through the process.

I look forward to hearing from you.

This is my favourite time of the year - I like to huddle around the wood fire, cosy up with a homemade quilt, and put on a good show.

We have recently refurbished three homes and have been pleased to welcome five new residents to Barunga by the Sea - Glen Washington, Jacky and Don Kraft, and Kay and Malcom Collins.

Glen has moved from his home in Port Broughton, Malcolm and Kay relocated from Moonta and Don and Jacky have moved here from Middleton some of you may remember Don and Jacky from their time managing the Mundoora Club.

We hope you all enjoy your new surroundings, comfortably settle in to the village lifestyle, and make many new friends.

At Barunga by the Sea, we host

regular guest speakers. In March, our guest speakers were Director of Finance and Business, Drew Ellis and Safety and Education Manager, David Edwards. They shared their previous career history and their roles at Barunga Village.

David also updated residents on the Barunga by the Sea emergency plan.

Other guest speakers included Joe and Nareej from Ecovantage who provided information about upgrading electric hot water systems to an energy-efficient heat pump and the benefits it can provide.

Also, we welcomed Catherine Moyse from CJM Legal—Wills on Wheels who shared the importance of having a will and keeping legal documents up to date.

Our Barunga by the Sea social committee have been busy,

hosting an Easter hot cross bun morning tea, a soup luncheon and trivia quiz nights.

The social committee were thrilled to receive a donation from the Barunga Village fundraising committee, these funds allowed them to purchase a television and sound bar for the Community Centre. This is a wonderful addition and allows residents to enjoy their monthly movie afternoons.

In other news, Ken Baker celebrated his 80th birthday, and both Janet and Max Pietsch and Janet Butler welcomed new great grandbabies to their growing families.

I hope you all stay healthy, happy and warm!

Four months in and I can already see positive changes in the Barunga Community Care team. We recognise that a combination of workforce shortages in the community sector particularly and the impact of COVID-19 have created pressure on our ability to provide consistent quality services.

An immediate goal has been to shore up our capacity and strengthen our team by employing new talented people. Some of the old guards have left and some new team members have come on board, and now it feels like a settled and strong team. The new lineup includes are range of diverse and experienced workers which adds to our resilience and capabilities.

Organisational and leadership skills, a great work ethic and great communication skills are what we are looking for in our staff. We have welcomed four new Client Liaison Officer’s (CLO’s) to our team. Simone Tilbury, who has a wealth of experience in NDIS as well as aged care. Sunny Ojiakor, a qualified Social Worker who has also worked in the Department of Child Protection.

Nicole Shute, has extensive experience in the field as a Support Worker and has training in dementia care,

infection control and palliative care. Naomi Silva, has been working as a Support Worker for many months and will be looking after some of our Port Broughton clients as well as maintaining some of her Support Worker clients in the Mid North region. Our new CLO’s join Julie Farley, who has worked at Barunga Village for nine years and continues to look after CHSP clients.

A second strategy to ramp up our capacity has been to advertise for new Support Workers across the region. We have employed a number of new Support Workers to cope with COVID-19 shortages, but it is not enough to simply employ more people. A staff training program has been identified as essential for improving our service quality and we are currently engaging with our Support Workers in the first stage of an ongoing professional development program. We held the first session in Kadina and the second in Port Pirie in June.

These training sessions are part of an ongoing strategy to professionalise our work force.

We aspire to have them be the most well-trained and skilled staff in the region. We touched on areas of their direct responsibility including, COVID19 management, professional

boundaries, confidentiality, correct wearing and removing of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and communication improvements.

A program of gaining industry related certified credentials is also in development.

Communication is another core principle in our armoury of professional improvement. We held a Community client meeting at Barunga by the Sea in May and while it was well attended it alerted us to the fact that our client data base was out of date and several clients were disappointed at missing out on an invitation.

Our plan is to rectify this and hold more sessions more frequently in different locations.

We want our clients to know who we are and tell us about issues they have so we can fix them. A face-to-face meeting allows for this open communication.

The two central themes of our approach are to build a highly skilled, professional workforce who are trained and resilient at adapting to changes along with a client base who are more than satisfied with our service levels and who will recommend Barunga Community Care as the best in the region.

Home is where the heart is they education and quality say and that pretty much sums improvement opportunities up my reason for doing the • Planning a creative approach work that I do. How to be a care to physiotherapy pain and home that feels like a home movement therapies and yet delivers the highest • Organising training for the standard of clinical care? How staff team in dementia care to employ a team of staff who and feelings-based care work extremely hard however • Developing our communal do not want to work anywhere activities program to else? incorporate in-house and combined activities that allow I love my work. I love the for a seamless transition from opportunity I have to try to outbreak to normal and back make a difference. I love again overseeing clinical care and I • Introducing new House love trying to shape the way in Leaders with strengthened which it is delivered. training and support programs Attention to detail, connection through empathy, striving always to put systems in place to support people, people thinking critically and being engaged with the outcomes – these are all things that excite me. We need each other and we need to share a goal.

What is our goal? Our goals are greater than getting through a pandemic, they are circled by our values of show kindness, support connections and strive to improve. I would like to share with you some of the areas we are working on: • Increasing our staff team to strengthen our roster and to build capacity • Transitioning to our new funding model • Working with our Registered Nurse team to develop portfolios of care with

I am very grateful to welcome to our team People and Culture Manager, David Manser and our Enquiries and Admissions Officer, Julie Kinghan. As David and Julie gradually take ownership of their new responsibilities, I will have increased opportunity to work on the wonderful projects listed above.

The introduction of People and Culture is a significant change for our organisation. Together with David, and our new People and Culture Officer, Donna Connolly, we will work to further embed our feelingsbased care culture across the breadth of our organisation for the benefit of our consumers, their families and our staff and volunteers. This will be commenced through an

improved system of recruitment and orientation with additional training, education and employment pathways that result in staff feeling that they are value adding to our organisation.

We have experienced a period without a House Leader in each House and staff and House Members have expressed to me how much they have missed the presence of this role. I am pleased to announce Travis White as Evelyn House Leader, Anita Gower as Spencer House Leader and Kylie Stringer as Renni, Dale and Eyre House Leader.

Brooke Peers continues as Stanley House Leader and we are very grateful for her hard work and wholehearted commitment to the people who live in that house. Our House Leaders commence as a new working group with a training day to orientate them to the role.

As I close my thoughts, I wish to express my gratitude to the staff team and families for the strength and resilience that you have all shown through this year. Outbreaks are sad and difficult times and we are all feeling the effects, no one more though we are aware, than our House Members in the Homes. I am so grateful for the support you have all demonstrated and expressed.

Administration and Finance may not be a sexy subject.

Generally speaking, if we get it right, nobody notices us. If we get it wrong, everybody does, and they are all negatively impacted. For this reason, we think it is an important area of our organisation. Also, you may be interested in knowing what has been happening lately in our space.

Like all the teams at Barunga Village, those in our team see themselves as service providers. It is within this context that we faced down challenges and helped keep the organisation functioning over the last few months.

It was significant and important that our team was able to weather the storm that COVID19 threw in its path. With a heightened focus on workforce and rostering challenges, the team played a key role in ensuring at least adequate staffing levels to provide continuity of service across the organisation. This was not always easy. COVID-19 impacted the workforce hard at times (including in our own team).

Internally, the team underwent a number of significant changes. Some long-time employees left, taking much corporate knowledge with them. Our special thanks to

long-serving Administration and Finance Manager, Samantha Crane, and our best wishes for her in her new role in her family business. After working with Samantha for a number of years, Elise Bormann has now stepped into this role.

When people leave, opportunities are created for others. The team has a number of new faces, each bringing with them a unique mix of skills, experience and personality. We continue to build a team that is diverse, robust and serviceoriented. I am especially pleased that the last few months has seen us be able to promote existing team members to more senior roles.

It is evident that we are not simply talking about creating career and professional development opportunities for our people – we can show that we are doing it!

The new Aged Care funding model, AN-ACC will soon be replacing the ACFI model that many people are used to. With this change comes a measure of uncertainty. Our team is on a steep learning curve as it prepares for the transition.

The team has also worked on a number of grant applications which, if successful, will make a huge, positive difference to our consumers and staff.

Some areas the grants relate to include:

• Equipment for use in care of our House Members • Technology upgrade • Additional solar panels (which will help us offset higher energy costs) • Upgrade to outdoor garden spaces at Barunga Homes The monitoring and applying for grants are an important function of this team. Grants help us to leverage our costs and to do more with less. They are a crucial component in our strategic goal of building for financial sustainability. The benefits of grants are shared across all of our consumers.

Our team wishes you all a safe and happy winter.

Despite the colder days, staff at Barunga Village have been out and about more than ever!

You will quite often see Barunga Village faces around the region, given we employ locally as well as provide inhome care to those amongst the community, however in this instance, you may have also seen many corporate staff, who have been busily attending different events across the state.

Most recently, Carly Barnes, Quality and IT Manager attended a two-day conference in Sydney hosted

by Information Technology across Aged Care (ITAC) to learn about improved data technology in aged care which coincides with the upcoming Government reforms as a result of the Royal Commission.

The conference gave Carly more insight into different products on the market to assist in improving quality processes and efficiencies within the workplace.

She said it was a great opportunity to see new initiative being produced to enhance the lives of our consumers, for example, she took a virtual trip to the Swiss Alps via virtual reality headsets.

On 5 July 2022, Jodie Webb, Retirement Manager attended a Do Come Monday Institute (DCMI) Workshop in Adelaide which focused on updates and further learnings of retirement villages within our state and also internationally. The workshop provided industry and legislative updates around retirement villages, further research on retirement villages locally and abroad, along with ideas about marketing promotion and fee structures.

Jodie said it was such a great opportunity to network among peers in the same industry.

“I came home with great relationships whom I can stay connected with for additional support”, Jodie said.

Virginia Pattingale, Community Manager has also been very busy, talking at the Crystal Brook Mens Shed about the importance of in-home support and how Barunga Community Care could assist them, and Annabel Freeth, Marketing and Communications Manager joined Virginia in holding a stall at the first ever Ageing and Disability Expo hosted by the Catylst Foundation in Kadina promoting the key services Barunga Village has to offer the region.

At Barunga Village, it is so important to enable staff to experience different opportunities and network with others, and encourage them to create connections and build confidence in their own roles, all of which strongly aligns with the organisations values of showing kindness, supporting connections and striving to improve.

Over the past twelve months, the organisation has grown more than ever, and with over 200 staff and volunteers, one key goal was to appoint a People and Culture Manager to join the team.

After an extensive recruitment process, Barunga Village is thrilled to welcome David Manser to the team to lead People and Culture across the organisation.

People and Culture is a relatively new term - quite often it is referred to as Human Resources management.

This role is not only about the organisation’s relationship with its staff and volunteers, but also about having a key focus on our people, and the importance of developing and nurturing

them and the culture they work amongst.

There are many layers to this role, and given it is newly created, it is wonderful that David brings a wealth of experience from previous Human Resource roles to enable him to develop and grow a strong program at Barunga Village.

David said he is really excited to be a part of Barunga Village’s journey now and into the future.

“I am hoping to support the current level of quality that exists at Barunga Village and help our staff develop and strive in their careers, but even more so, ensure they understand how important their role is in this industry.”

“My position here at Barunga Village will not only contribute to staff and volunteers, but extends much wider to both our consumers and their families, and for anyone else that is connected to the organisation in some way,” said David.

As People and Culture Manager, David will be writing a quarterly report that will be included in BV Lifestyle, so please stay tuned for his first update in the Spring edition. If you see David out and about, please feel very welcome to say hello!

Photograph of People and Culture Manager, David Manser and People and Culture Officer, Donna Connelly below.