Aged Care Union Slams Government over Bad Nursing Home

The General Secretary of the Health Services Union (NSW) Michael Williamson slammed the government for not ensuring that proper standards were being maintained at St Simeon Village Rooty Hill.

Mr Williamson said "it is not good enough that elderly Australians should put up with sub standard care. This facility failed 6 of the 44 standards yet the government allows it to continue to operate."

"Moreover, the accreditation team stated there were appropriate staffing levels even though there was no one other than a staff member sleeping over at night to look after residents from 9.30 pm to 6.30 a.m."

"Under what circumstances can anyone say that no staff on shift except for a person doing a sleep over is an appropriate level of staffing for 41 residents 11 of whom are high care including residents with dementia. It is a disgrace and shows that the government is failing older Australians by not providing minimum staffing levels as the HSU has continually called. The accreditation agency is failing in its job to ensure proper levels of care in the aged care industry. "

In relation to the six standards that the accreditation agency failed the facility on, they related to the following:

o Management systems for continuous improvement including systems for medication incident follow up - There were 10 non signature for drug administration;
o Resident accident and incident reports not consistently documented as completed with examples of care not being evaluated for effectiveness;
o Problems in relation to the management of residents with challenging behaviour including residents who wander around and out of the facility sometimes in an intrusive manner to other residents;
o Lack of resident meetings to discuss lifestyle issues;
o Deficiencies relating to the services system for monitoring their systems for maintaining a safe environment and infection control;
o 55 of the 64 resident and staff accident forms had no follow up action

Mr Williamson concluded by stating "that at this election the interests of some elderly need to be put first and that the Howard government has failed to honour the trust shown to it by Australians to get aged care right."

Contact: Michael Williamson, General Secretary on 02 92294999 or 0418 229 712

© 2003 Health Services Union (HSU)
This page: http://www.hsua.org.au/media/1094166880_9184.html
Last Modified: Wednesday, 16-Nov-2005 17:19:04 EST

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