By Mikayla van Loon
A new purpose built aged care facility has just opened in the heart of Kilsyth bringing dignity and community to the residents.
Australian Unity’s Walmsley Residential Aged Care facility officially opened on Friday 10 February after five years of consultation and construction.
General manager of places Lorraine Calder said while Walmsley had an aged care facility in the past, it had become tired and not fit for purpose.
“The aged care that was here was quite old and it was something the organisation did as a response to providing services for people that were members as they aged,” she said.
“So the aged care building was a set of three builders that had responded to the needs of people in the local community at the time, and then they’d been cobbled together to create an aged care service.”
Ms Calder said Australian Unity had never designed anything to suit the Kilsyth area but identified a need for more services, which saw them embark on the project.
“We went out and had a look at how aged care was being delivered and we weren’t happy with it.
“So a group of people did a tour and saw the Humanitas model, the Eden model, the Greenhouse model in America and came back and decided that we wanted to follow quite a different model that wasn’t usually followed in Australia.”
Inventing the Better Together model, Ms Calder said it takes the position of the residents’ experience with their environment and surroundings.
“It’s a person centred model about providing aged care in the most normalised environment possible.
“We’ve split our 120 resident bedrooms into small households and they are self contained. So you enter into the living space, you never walk past a bedroom…we make the difference between what is home, what is personal and what is public.”
Each household has around eight or nine neighbours to mingle with and build a small community for activities, with the broader space to connect with as well.
Using architecture to create comfort, ownership and a sense of pride, Ms Calder said of the residents who have already moved in, managers and carers have noticed the benefits.
“People come in and their health improves because of the environment as opposed to what regularly happens is people’s health deteriorates because it’s such an alienating and uncomfortable environment.
“All these little mechanisms that we use and have defined a hierarchy of spaces that are familiar and define the difference between what’s public and what’s private.”
Group Managing Director and CEO Rohan Mead said it was exciting to see this next step in the organisation’s 180 year history of providing for the community and to contribute a “flourishing precinct and important fixture in the broader Kilsyth community”.
“Australian Unity is proud to deliver these purpose built facilities making sure they continue to meet the needs of the community we hope for years to come,” he said.
“As a mutual company and organisation, we have an important role to play, we believe, in the delivery of social infrastructure that supports the provision of real wellbeing to communities.”
The $38.8 million investment in a residential aged care facility brings with it a cinema, hair salon, cafe and numerous outdoor spaces within the existing residential village to cater for permanent, respite and palliative care, as well as memory support and ageing in place.
Yarra Ranges Councillor Lenx Cox said it was excellent to know his ward in Kilsyth was being supported with such a wonderful facility.
“It’s such an important thing to have a place like this…when you get too tired or sick of living at home on your own and you can go somewhere like this and live with other people maybe of your own age, with your own interests and just be looked after by some wonderful, competent nurses and staff, which is what is happening here,” he said.
“This sort of thing is wonderful and I really congratulate Australian Unity on the amount of effort they put into this place.”
