How are smaller, stand-alone providers being challenged in the current climate? We spoke to Angelia Dixon, the CEO of Andrew Kerr Care, a not-for-profit provider with a 120-bed aged care home, home care services and day centre on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.
Previously the CEO of CrimeStoppers Victoria, Angelia has been in her role for over two years and says Andrew Kerr is facing a number of challenges including implementing their pandemic plan as a small stand-alone team.
“I told the Leadership team that I would make mistakes, that they would probably make mistakes and that I forgive them and myself and they should too,” she said. “This has freed us up to learn from our mistakes and accept them without agonising over them.”
There is also the emotional impact on staff, who are struggling with their own concerns about COVID-19 while supporting residents and staff.
“There’s an emotional toll with that responsibility and I’m glad we have an Employee Assistance Program for staff as well as access to free counselling for residents,” Angelia says.
The CEO admits they also didn’t focus enough on communication with residents, clients, staff, families and stakeholders during the first few days because they were preoccupied with their immediate response.
“As soon as we got that right I noticed how much better residents and staff were feeling,” Angelia said. “Now that’s something we discuss every day at our COVID Leadership meetings. I’ve had feedback from staff and residents that the communication has been great.”
Angelia now engages with families and residents personally as well as running lunchtime Q&As with her senior leadership team, which in turn has been received positively by staff and families.
“I remember one morning when I had quite a few messages of support from staff and families and we had a pretty stressful situation that day. Their support, which I shared with the Leadership team helped us get through a very intense day.”
The CEO says she does worry if she is making the right decisions – unlike many other operators, they are still open to families visiting, albeit with restrictions and strict testing for symptoms, but this is a decision that is being reviewed daily.
“I spent a sleepless night last week as we were actually having more visitors than usual, despite restricted hours,” she said. “I wrote to our families about this, gave them the data and the number of cases of COVID-19 in our local government area and told them about the high visitor numbers and reduced visitor access by 50%. Thankfully that’s working and I’m comfortable with the balance we've struck to keep residents and families together and everyone safe and feeling safe.”
To help residents cope with the reduction in visitors, Andrew Kerr has introduced Skype sessions and bought extra IT for FaceTime. They are also employing extra Diversional Therapists so they can run smaller groups and one-on-one sessions.
“The Lifestyle team are really stepping up and everyone can see their enthusiasm,” Angelia adds.
The home – which has 94.2% occupancy rate – is still taking on new residential clients on a case by case basis, but have opted against taking on new home care clients so they can potentially redeploy those staff to the aged care home if needed.
The CEO hopes that is the cases stabilise, the home will continue to work on new ways to keep families and residents engaged.
“Our $14 million refurbishment will be finished and we’ll have fantastic gardens for residents to use, bigger lounge areas with bay views and a refurbished unit to staff and open,” she said. “Overall, I’m, optimistic, the situation will eventually improve.”
Andrew Kerr is preparing for staff shortages and are looking to target local people who have lost their jobs to work in our kitchen, laundry and cleaning areas.
“We’ll also see if we can increase our casual pool of care staff, this will be harder to achieve, and we are talking about a few ideas that are a bit radical.”
But this all costs money – and like all in the sector, Andrew Kerr has had to increase its spending to deal with the crisis.
“We’ve added extra cleaning, door staff, more diversional therapists, purchased more IT, just to name a few,” Angelia concluded. “I am hoping the government funding will cover these extra costs, right now it’s not clear. I’ve taken the view that these are extraordinary times and we'll do what’s right by our residents, clients and staff.
We are sure that you feel the same.
