Editorial: Balance Not Just Blame

YESTERDAY my grandfather who is a 95 year old resident at Strathearn Aged Care fell off his scooter while he was down the street and was taken by ambulance to the hospital for some minor injuries.

Jack Flaherty part of the forward brigade for the Strathearn Village in the horse festival parade.

The ambulance called to let me know – thanks guys you rock – and said their initial assessment was he seemed fine because he was cantankerous for being taken to hospital, which sounded like Pa to a tee.

At 95 the risk of him falling off his scooter and having a serious injury or dying is a real one, but he is not from a generation that avoids all risk and even at 95 wants to enjoy what little freedom remains.

As a family our assessment is if he was to die after an accident on his scooter it is an acceptable risk compared to taking away his freedom – so we just try in vein to tell him to slow down even though we know he won’t start listening to us now.

So I understand what Angela Raguz from HammondCare was talking about when she said weighing risk and safety for each of their residents and their family is different: Strathearn Recovering After Fall.

But two things struck me most when I was reporting on this story first was the community criticism towards Christopher Roach and his friends who helped the old lady and the other was HammondCare agreeing to an open and frank phone interview.

Christopher Roach and Rhiannon May both told me how they found the elderly lady, cared for her and tried to raise the alarm, but they also told me how they had been vilified for raising concerns with Strathearn by the broader community, banned from community pages and their integrity questioned about why they were out at 1am.

Seriously, I don’t think communist China even bothers having curfews anymore.

Why do people even care about why they were out at 1am, let’s just say they were out selling drugs in Stafford Street that night – which they weren’t – if they cared for an elderly lady in the community and raised an alarm for her care the appropriate response is simply – thank you.

They also have the right to challenge the care at Strathearn in those circumstances, although there are people in the community who think it is ok to attack the people who reported the incident as a way of protecting Strathearn, thankfully HammondCare who now operate Strathearn didn’t see it that way.

Generally with controversial stories average organisations will refuse to give an interview and give a statement which provides next to no information, because they don’t want to be challenged and they want to sweep any controversy under the carpet.

So when Angela Raguz from HammondCare phoned me and answered all questions openly, honestly and fully, it was refreshing.

She explained what had happened, without trying to justify the incident, she acknowledged it was a huge concern to them and walked through how they were going to address the concerns, she did not shy away from any question, or make blanket claims she couldn’t say anything because of patient privacy.

In this situation both the people who raised the alarm and the organisation are not afraid to look at what went wrong and more importantly look at how to fix it.

It is reasonable to ask why it took so long for the organisation to respond, but it is also reasonable that everybody has the freedom to be outside at 1am be it an elderly resident at Strathearn or a good Samaritan returning home after working on a car at a mates place.

Elizabeth Flaherty
Editor of scone.com.au