Welcome to the 34th and new look edition of  The Village News!  And apologies for the delay in its production. But I believe that you will see from the articles that we have been a little distracted with a few developments.

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50 Years Corporate and Village Celebrations

It’s almost old news at this stage but we celebrated in May our 50^th Anniversary as a Company and retirement village as well as 20 years as a residential aged care facility. Two wonderful events were held, a Corporate Event involving our Members, Directors, Corporate Colleagues and Politicians in the Manly Golf Club and a few days later a great evening with our Residents and Staff. It was humbling to look back on all that has been achieved over 50 years and to honour the contributions of all who have played their part in our success.

“Between 2 Chairs” – Margaret Campbell (left), Chairperson ,Residents Committee, Ciaran Foley (centre) and Wendy Kramer (right), Chairperson, Board of Directors.

Building an extended residential aged care facility for our future

In May, I was joined by Lindsey Hatt, Director of Care and Patricia Cearnes, Retirement Living Manager in meeting with residents, relatives and staff to announce that the Board and Management had decided to move forward in our strategic direction to expand our Company by doubling the size of our residential aged care facility. We appointed Jackson Teece Architects to work with consultants and to achieve development consent for this essential development.

Number 1 brief was to ensure that during construction, apart from minimising disruption to our valued residents, we must maintain our operational revenue base by continuing to operate our 42 approved resident places throughout the building project. That makes good business sense. Yes, we know that there will be noise and dust but we have done this a few times before and done so successfully with minimum disruption to our residents, visitors and staff.

Building projects are also opportunities for added stimulation for our residents who have demonstrated in the past their interest in the construction process with change occurring before their very eyes. There is huge activity over days with all sorts of builders, tradespersons and consultants on site, relationships and ongoing exchanges occur between residents and builders and the multi-diversity of activity is evident to all. That is the positive side of construction and then there is the prize, the ‘turnkey’ day when we celebrate the end of construction and the opening of the new services!

A ‘Story Board’ providing an impression of the new Residential Aged Care Facility

Acquisition of William Charlton Village

In June, the management of Allambie Heights Village Ltd. and the management of The Benevolent Society, owners and operators of our next door neighbour, met with the residents of William Charlton Village to announce that as of 30 August 2016, Allambie Heights Village Ltd. would take over the ownership of the village.

This is an immensely important strategic development outcome for our Company and the culmination of significant work to finalise and execute this transfer of ownership. William Charlton Village has 55 existing apartments, is a separate retirement village with community hall and offices in a wonderful location and development potential on 3.7 hectares of land. (Allambie Heights Village and residential aged care facility consists of 1.4 hectares in total). A new crown lease was negotiated effectively to secure the commercial viability of the village and its future.

This expansion represents a win for William Charlton Village residents, a win for The Benevolent Society who recognised Allambie Heights Village Ltd. as a preferred operator based on our quality management, care and accommodation high standards and it’s a win for the Northern Beaches, the local and wider community. The feedback from Members, Residents and Staff of Allambie Heights Village Ltd. has been overwhelmingly positive with expressions of excitement about the future.

Acquisition of William Charlton Village

Appreciation and thanks

Of course, all of this development is happening as we continue with the important work of operating our existing services to our valued residents. Thank you to our residents, relatives, staff, volunteers and contractors for your great understanding and support.

Thank you management and staff colleagues for your attention to detail and for your continued commitment and service to our residents. Keep up the great work and keep striving to achieve higher standards! That’s what makes us different from our competitors and more and more, it’s going to be a hallmark of what Allambie Heights Village Ltd. is known for.

I am impressed with the enthusiasm of the consultants and architects for this project. We have been clear in our brief about the highest standards that we expect in all aspects of design, functionality, homeliness and finishes that we want for our existing and future residents. Innovation and the grasping of every possible initiative in the technological space is important to us in order that we future proof our new buildings to embrace the changing needs and demands of our customers, our residents. We need to dream about how we will want to live in future years and ensure that we build accommodation that will embrace easily the changes and inventiveness of future innovations. Our buildings must be constructed so as to be easily adaptable to our customers’ future needs.

We will be concluding the plans for our new and extended residential aged care facility very shortly, seeking Owner’s Consent for the building development from Crown Lands (from which we lease the land) and then submitting a development application to Council for development consent which we hope to achieve by February 2017. We expect then that construction will take 23 months concluding in 2019.

We will achieve an additional 42-44 single rooms which will provide with our existing 42 singe rooms a total of 84-86 approved places, all single rooms of 30m²  that will be some of the largest residential aged care facility rooms in Australia.

We will remain sustainable, competitive and receptive to the increasing numbers evident of an ageing population who require our specialist services. We will keep you all updated about developments through a variety of communications.

Tony Abbott visits

Ciaron Foley and Tony Abbott

The Honourable Tony Abbott, MP for Warringah, visited Allambie Heights Village on 30 June to meet with residents and staff and to offer congratulations on our Company reaching 50 years.

In a Question & Answer session, he answered all questions presented to him from the audience including dissatisfaction about proposed changes to superannuation and how to meet the workforce requirements for the aged care industry in the future. Ciarán Foley, as convenor of the session expressed the industry wide concerns about the rationing of approved places for residential aged care facilities (RACFs) by the Department of Health’s Aged Care Approvals Round (ACAR) at a time when it is estimated that there are currently 380,000 people living with dementia in Australia and one person is diagnosed with dementia every six minutes. The industry needs to grow from 190,000 RACF places to 259,000 places by 2022 to meet demand.

It was an impressive performance from our locally elected representative as he mingled with residents and staff over a cup of tea afterwards. Mr Abbott was successfully returned to the seat of Warringah with a clear majority on the General Election two days after his visit to us.

Footnote

A positive outcome of our strong statements to Mr Abbott in relation to the then proposed superannuation changes is that the Government has recently announced a more favourable revision of its intended policies on Super. Proving a point that it’s important to voice opinion to achieve positive change and outcomes!

Comments

I hope that you liked this new look version of The Village News to accompany our recent launch of ‘Snapshots’, our collection of photos of a range of activities and people. If you did or if you would like to add a comment, please write to us at general@alhvillage.com.au

Ciarán Foley
Chief Executive Officer.