Probe into home met with apathy
Little hope of change for victims
LLOYD Evans has moved his wife’s fragile parents four times in the last five months. Geoffrey Sweet has had to leave the city. Some of their friends are still chasing treasured possessions.
Lorraine Cook is having to catch two buses each time she wants to see her husband, who is suffering dementia, and she is doing it five times a week.
This is the real story of the Earle Haven nursing home debacle in which 69 vulnerable pensioners were suddenly taken from their home in the middle of a winter’s night because of a contract dispute gone wrong.
This week a Federal Government report recommended 23 changes to the aged care sector to prevent a repeat of what happened in Nerang on July 11.
However, current residents at Earle Haven, employees and family members of those who lost their homes say they have given up expecting significant change.
“It is not even worth any energy getting angry about it,” Lloyd Evans told the Bulletin.
“As long as they don’t get moved again. It’s only worth it if change happens.”
For Mr Evans and his inlaws the situation has taken its toll as he has had to move the elderly couple four times since they were evacuated.
“They are in a shared room together so it has worked out finally,” Mr Evans said.
“The difficult thing is just the distance, it now takes half an hour to get to them.”
Like other families who have spoken to the Bulletin, Mr Evans is yet to hear directly from the Federal Government on its findings.
“Not a word … At the end of the day we want to put that behind us, ready to move on.”
Former resident Geoffery Sweet was just as apathetic.
Now located in Brisbane he said he was content with his new home.
He spent weeks in an interim facility in a room with six other residents often sleeping on an armchair, waiting to move back home.
“While I was in that other place it was awful, but it is all in the past,” he said.
“If I was younger I might be mad and if I was still there and involved it may be a different story, but I feel in myself I have moved on.”
A resident at the Earle Haven retirement village said the collapse of the nursing wing had had a lasting effect on the 800 residents who own units at the facility.
“Units are not being sold, which is really sad for people who have invested and live here,” he said.
“But the big elephant is also the fact couples bought here with the belief that when one got sick the other could go into high care just a few hundred metres away. That can’t happen now.”
The Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union said it was continuing to pursue entitlements owed to staff working at the nursing wing at the time of its closure.
Former employees said they did not expect great change to the aged care industry despite the turmoil.
“It’s all about the dollars at the end of the day,” a former Earle Haven employee said.
Speaking about the overall sector, the ex-staff member said: “The residents need a better way to voice their complaints outside of the facility they stay in, or management will just bully them into submission.”
The collapse of the nursing home came after a falling out between owner People Care and contractor Help Street.
For five hours, 69 elderly residents looked on as furniture, appliances and healthcare supplies were packed into removal vans and driven away.
Vital medical records had been removed the day before.
Soon after, emergency crews would be called and residents taken away to shortterms stays. It was the last time many of them saw each other. Three would later die.
This week the last of three inquiries were held into the dispute – a royal commission inquiry, State Parliamentary hearings, and a Federal Government report.
That report, produced by Kate Carnell AO, made 23 recommendations, all of which the Federal Government said it would adopt.
The findings call for greater regulator capacity, greater oversight of financial and commercial arrangements, more oversight of subcontractors, management of risks with organisational culture and better responses to emerging situations in aged care.
The Carnell inquiry also left the door open to further action, suggesting investigations into Help Street and People Care are under way by other authorities but no criminal charges have been laid.