Tasmania’s much anticipated Korongee dementia village will open its doors next week, with the first six residents moving in gradually over the coming months. Lucy O’Flaherty, the chief executive of Glenview, which operates Korongee, told HelloCare the furniture is in the new buildings, the gardens are having their final touches made, they’re just waiting for the coffee machine to be plumbed. “We are on schedule for a fabulous official opening on Tuesday,” she said when we chatted this week...

Ageing and death can be difficult issues. Most of us prefer to distract ourselves from these fundamental realities. As a result, however, our political discussion on aged care has been characterised by gingerness, euphemism and indecision. We have failed to grapple practically with a concrete political problem. Since 2002 the government has released four intergenerational. Another is due this year. All have identified our ageing population as a core national challenge. None has triggered meaningful reform to address it. But...

  The federal government has announced it will roll out another 6,105 home care packages and has extended the reporting period of the royal commission by three months.  Following a request from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the government has agreed to extend its reporting period due to the impact of COVID-19. The Commission will now deliver its final report by 26 February, 2021. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said suspension of royal commission hearings...

For many years we have been distant grandparents to four of our six young grandchildren. Distant geographically, that is, as we love all of them to bits and happily it’s mutual. So we have always made a big effort to make sure that we get to be with our more remote ones as much as possible, with the aspiration being monthly visits in one direction or the other, with each pair (and their lovely parents too, of course). And in...

  David Beard says there’s no discrimination at the nursing home where he is a resident. “Everyone’s accepted” and are made to feel they belong at Uniting The Marion, in the Sydney suburb of Leichhardt, Mr Beard told HelloCare. Mr Beard, who is 93, speaks with humour and animation. “Everyone thinks I’m pommy, but I’m not,” he said. “I’m a true Aussie. I was born in New South Wales in 1923.” Mr Beard, who describes himself as “the...

  The coroner has recommended the Tasmanian ambulance service rewrite its policies around refusal of treatment after a 75-year-old woman twice refused to be taken to hospital and two days later died. Tasmania’s ambulance services visited Feryne Hunter twice in the two days before her death, but both times she refused to be taken to hospital. But the coroner found that Ambulance Tasmania was not at fault.  “I cannot speculate why Ms Hunter did not wish to accept medical treatment...

Aged care workers are, from time to time, the target of aggression from the residents they care for at work. Sometimes it is from residents who are living with dementia, who may find themselves unable to communicate their needs and lash out. We often hear from our readers who work in aged care that these incidents are simply ‘part of the job’. Aged care workers have reported residents push them, bite them, or run their walkers into them, causing fear, distress and physical injury...

A judge has shown mercy to an elderly man who has avoided a jail after attempting to kill his wife and himself “for love”. Joseph Sugar, 88, injected himself and his wife of 50 years, Heather, with insulin two days before they were due to move into separate buildings in the same residential aged care facility. Mrs Sugar was diagnosed with dementia in  2014, and was no longer able to care for herself or recognise her family or carers. Judge...

  Are you a glass half empty kind of person? Do you tend to dwell on the negative, ruminate over the past, or worry incessantly about the future? These ways of thinking not only make you feel lousy, researchers have shown they could also contribute to higher rates of dementia as you grow older. Researchers from University College London Psychiatry found that in people aged over the age of 55, ‘repetitive negative thinking’ (RNT) was linked to cognitive decline and...

Each of these ‘little boxes’ in the locked down Melbourne Towers holds a story. Someone who matters. We are listening and we care. The past 2 days I have had the privilege of being one of a team of nurses from Knox Private Hospital providing COVID swabbing for the residents of the Towers. This pandemic brings out the best in some and the worst in others. These past two days I’ve been lucky to see countless examples of the BEST! Day...

  The coroner has recommended the Tasmanian ambulance service rewrite its policies around refusal of treatment after a 75-year-old woman twice refused to be taken to hospital and two days later died. Tasmania’s ambulance services visited Feryne Hunter twice in the two days before her death, but both times she refused to be taken to hospital. But the coroner found that Ambulance Tasmania was not at fault.  “I cannot speculate why Ms Hunter did not wish to accept medical treatment...

  An assistant nurse has had an assault charge against her dismissed, after the magistrate said he believed the accused was genuinely trying to help the resident. Chancal Arokianathan had been working as a carer for 30 years, and up until the incident had an “unblemished record”, according to a report by the ABC. Just before Christmas last year, Ms Arokianathan was helping a 73-year-old resident shower at a nursing home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. While showering her, Ms Arokianathan...