Raad Richards, CEO of Carrington Care, had never experienced COVID-19 until an infected male staff member walked into one of the four aged care homes on the charity’s 27ha site at Grasmere, 65km south-west of Sydney’s CBD, early last month.
Carrington Care has residential care, 41 one- and two-bedroom assisted living units and 283 retirement village residents on the one site.
“We had kept COVID-19 out of Carrington Care during all 2020 and 2021. Then we had five or six cases in one of the RAC from the staff member bringing it in and then it became 21 cases, but all in the one building,” said Raad.
“We locked down that home hard and confined residents to their rooms. We worked very closely with Public Health at South Western Sydney Local Health District. Our staff did a brilliant job and we made sure there was no cross-fertilisation with retirement and assisted living.
“We did have staffing shortages through being close contacts and managed to use our staff in community care and our existing staff did extra shifts, additional hours.”
Raad said he kept families of the residents informed daily.
“We had to isolate people in the retirement units and villas and kept checking on them. We have not had a positive case in the retirement area. We have not had a case beyond the 21 we had in January,” he said.
He said that he found the Commonwealth Department of Health efficient, delivering personal protection equipment supplies within 36 hours, adding that Carrington Care had bought supplementary equipment themselves.
“It is all about management, internal management and how to manage your staff,” he added.
