Warrigal has welcomed the release of the Royal Commissioner’s Final Report with its 148 recommendations and extends their appreciation to the Commissioners and their teams for what they have brought to this enormous task.

The report will now be a historic turning point in the rebuild of community trust in the important services that the aged care industry provide to the oldest people in Australia.

The Government is required to give a response by May this year and will need to consider all the recommendations the Royal Commission has made, and there is widespread hope that from this a more sustainable aged care system that allows everyone to live out their lives with respect and dignity can be built.

The stories and events that were told before the Commission were not easy to hear but they were necessary. Neglect and harm is completely unacceptable and the Commission has now written a report that could potentially right the whole system. 20 previous reports over the past 20 years have not been fully implemented by various governments so this huge report will require a very large investment to be implemented.

We are hoping for a strong moral response from the government to this report so that we can implement some of the minimum staffing levels that this report recommends. There are lots of recommendations in the report that providers can implement too so we also acknowledge that providers need to be accountable too for better services.

Our senior Australians are among our greatest treasures, and they deserve the highest quality aged care possible from Governments at all levels and from all organisations that provide accommodation, services or support.

Warrigal will immediately take steps to address the matters that are referred to in the report, and will immediately set up a high-level taskforce to examine the whole report and adopt as many of the recommendations as we can at Warrigal. We will:

-Immediately engage and work with others such as NSW Health to ensure clinically sound practice happens at every service location
-Rapidly expand our home services this year to meet the needs of the increasing numbers of older people who want to stay at home
-Improve our workforce selection and induction processes to make sure all new staff know what they need to know and become experts ASAP
-Transparently report all our staff levels and ratios and all our quality care outcomes so that everyone knows what happens at every service and every location at Warrigal
-Review our Board and Management Teams in line with the minimum standards in the Royal Commission report.

Community trust is built on transparency and Warrigal is committed more than ever to making these changes to ensure our older people come first always.

Warrigal knows that there are a lot of important issues to address. We will be implementing all the things that we can, and we feel hopeful that the Government will treat this report seriously. There may be a lot of improvement coming for everyone in the sector.

Warrigal looks forward to the year ahead, an election year, which promises to be our best opportunity to achieve the significant reform our sector needs.

Warrigal sees this time as an opportunity for all of us to focus on the future needs of older people in Australia.