Yackandandah Health CEO, Annette Nuck and two Committee of Management members are heading to Canberra for meetings with Ministers and advisors on Tuesday, 19 June.
Ms Nuck said the team is going to share the concept of the Yackandandah model of intergenerational care.
“We are meeting with the Minister for Aged Care, Ken Wyatt and representatives from the Minister for Rural Health and Regional Communities and the Minister for Health’s office. Member for Indi, Cathy McGowan, has organised these opportunities for us,” Ms Nuck said.
“Our model is about the elders living in residential aged care mixing with different age groups and different people every day – not as a special activity. It will be normal. We are not creating an age friendly community, we are working toward developing an environment and services that enable our residents to be part of the wider community that is already friendly and welcoming to all ages. Our concern with residential aged care is that although the facilities are built within towns, they are often not part of the town. In Yackandandah, we do not need to build a ‘fake’ village. We live in a village. We just need to open the doors and bring the community in.”
Yackandandah Health is currently building 16 new residential aged care rooms and 10 apartments, valued at $5.8million. This building is due for completion in September.
“The next stage of our plans is to develop the community hub. This will offer health and wellbeing facilities and services for the whole community. While we fully self-funded the building now being constructed, we are looking for funding and partners to develop the community hub,” Ms Nuck said.
“In our meetings we hope to better understand the requirements of federal grants that might be available to us and invite the Ministers to visit us when they are in the north east.
Ms Nuck said Yackandandah Health is developing concept plans for the community hub after consulting the community about its health and wellbeing needs last year.
“The community’s top priority was a heated exercise pool. Obviously, this can be used by parents and babies and all age groups, right through to older people. Also highly requested were a visiting dentist, acute hospital, palliative care, gym, local bus / public transport, a cinema / theatre and adolescent mental health services.
“We are building our health service offering, having last year started operating the medical centre and most recently adding a naturopath.
“The vision for the Yackandandah model is that the community hub becomes a vibrant part of our community – we will have a café and be home to other services such as child care, events will take place here and there will be people coming and going to use the pool, gym, health services and meeting spaces.”