After lunch and the formal awards bit (and a couple of glasses of wine), something quite unexpected happened.
I was fortunate to be invited to attend a lunch a couple of weeks back at the offices of Stockland in Sydney to mark their achievement of the new(ish) Lifemark accreditation across its 49 owned and managed villages and its head office.
The lunch was attended by both the village manager and the resident committee chairperson from each of the seven Stockland villages that had been part of the first sample round of audits. There were speeches and each set of village representatives got to officially receive their framed certificate.
Stockland’s chief executive of retirement living, Stephen Bull was the host, along with several other Stockland executives. John Krnel from BSI – the professional accreditation organisation that developed the Lifemark system – was also there to officiate.
After lunch and the formal awards bit (and a couple of glasses of wine), something quite unexpected happened.
A discussion we were having at our table leapt, like a spark from a fire, across to the next table and then in a few moments the whole room was alight! Quite suddenly, almost 40-odd people were engaged in a single discussion and CEO, Stephen Bull found himself right at the centre of it.
What an opportunity! Of course everyone availed themselves of the rare chance to ask the ‘big boss’ some direct questions.
It was all very polite and jovial and good-natured and Mr Bull quickly found himself adjusting his chair in order to better address the whole room. He took all questions and comments generously and intelligently; and he stayed the distance. It was a great, spontaneous thing.
Hot topics
What did residents want to talk about? Well, the conversation ranged around topics like Stockland’s building and refurbishment plans, the pros and cons of ‘vertical villages’ and some discussion about the new Cardinal Freeman project under development in Sydney’s inner west, which incorporates an aged care home in the grounds, operated by Opal Aged care.
Oops! There were some expressions in the room that said, “We were having such a nice time and now the conversation has to turn to aged care?”!
Someone stepped in to establish the upper hand in this evolving topic: “I think that some of the people coming into the village these days are leaving it a bit late and they’re that bit older and not really able to cope with the lifestyle,” said this person. There were soft sounds of agreement from behind me.
“Yes, sometimes they probably should really be going somewhere where there is a bit more support…what do you call it?” said another.
A few people tentatively chimed in with suggestions like ‘aged care’ or, “what are they called? Serviced apartments?”
“Yes,” confirmed Stephen Bull, looking, I thought, a little unnerved. “Serviced apartments.”
And we went on to hear a bit about how many Stockland villages offered serviced apartments and what they actually provided.
This is what researchers and policy makers like to call a ‘supportive environment’ where people can ‘age positively’, ‘age in place’, with access to, among other things, a ‘continuum of care.’ Otherwise, you might as well live in an ordinary apartment block, right?
Do we care about care?
This was a great lunch and a terrific event for me, the ‘newbie’, having the opportunity to meet some residents and managers and then to be part of such a wonderful, spontaneous and illuminating discussion.
Illuminating because – well, here’s the thing: It occurred to me that, at least among this small sample of village residents (and admittedly residents who by sheer dint of being president of their respective resident committees were likely to be confident, active people), there was very little appetite for conversations about care or support.
What is the experience, I wonder, of that person who joins the village ‘too late’ and really should be ‘somewhere else’?
A couple of months back when I was writing about bullying in retirement villages, I read several accounts of bullying behaviour in the US context which involved people being ignored or rejected from groups and activities on account of their being ‘too old’. In no way am I suggesting that any of these people would be guilty of this but the conversation did get me wondering if that sort of thing happens here too, even subtly.
The other thing that I kept thinking about was how different these views seemed (and I am remembering it is a small, skewed sample) from the message I had heard over and over at conferences in recent years – that the average age of entry to a retirement village was increasing year on year and that a key driver for almost everyone choosing a village was the comforting perception of a secure and supportive community of peers and the availability of ‘extras’ like emergency call buttons, an onsite nurse and other allied health; and increasingly the availability of further care options on-site or close by.
This is what researchers and policy makers like to call a ‘supportive environment’ where people can ‘age positively’, ‘age in place’, with access to, among other things, a ‘continuum of care.’ Otherwise, you might as well live in an ordinary apartment block, right?
Are there village residents out there who really refuse to acknowledge human frailty to the point of rejecting care services and anyone who might need them?
An unpleasant topic?
Was I wrong in getting a feeling that care and support wasn’t a very welcome topic? Perhaps it is sometimes just a case of, ‘look, we’re having a nice time, do we really need to bring up the unpleasant subject of our own immortality?’
Personally, I’d like to think that, if I was living in a village in my 70s or 80s with a few health or mobility issues to contend with, that my friends and neighbours in the village would be sympathetic and encouraging and helpful.
Nobody WANTS to go into aged care if they can avoid it. And government policy in Australia and throughout the western world, actively encourages us to remain living ‘at home’, as independently as we can, for as long as we can. And that’s what most of us want to do. It should be even better if ‘home’ is a safe, supportive, purpose-built environment like a village.
As Chris mentioned in a previous post about villages in New Zealand, aged care in villages is the norm in that country. And it is entirely normal and expected in the UK and even in the big ‘Disney-style’ retirement communities in places like Florida in the US.
Are there village residents out there who really refuse to acknowledge human frailty to the point of rejecting care services and anyone who might need them? It seems unlikely to me since none of us ever knows what might befall us tomorrow or any time.
I know there are many shades of subtlety to be explored here and I wonder if anyone would like to contribute to this conversation?
