Strathearn Recovering After Fall

AT approximately 1 am on Monday a resident of Strathearn aged care was found lying in the grounds of the Stafford Street facility.

The elderly lady was uninjured and her family who were contacted by Strathearn have said they are comfortable with how the incident is being managed and thankful to the people who found their mum and raised the alarm.

Christopher Roach was returning home after working on a car at a friend’s house when he noticed someone lying on the lawn of the facility and tried to raise the alarm with staff.

When he had trouble getting the attention of staff he returned to his friend’s house to enlist their help.

Rhiannon May was one of his friends who returned to help and said they were frustrated by how long it took staff to respond.

“My partner and his mate jumped the fence and helped her off the ground and my partner sat with her, while his mate and I tried to find somebody to alert them that she was outside and had fallen over,” said Ms May.

“We went to the door and rang the doorbell, we tried knocking on doors or windows where we saw lights on and we went to the hospital who said they rang the nursing home and it still took 45 minutes to an hour before anybody came outside to help,” she said.

“They said ‘we have no missing residents’ and we said ‘well you do because she is outside lying on the ground’ and it still took another 15 or 20 minutes until they came to help her,” she said.

“If it didn’t take over an hour and a half to investigate it properly, one said they’d seen us on camera and thought we were trying to break in,” Rhiannon May said.

Christopher Roach said he can understand staff may have been scared, but he wants better systems in place at the facility.

“They wouldn’t open the curtain to us to see that we were genuine and trying to talk to them about the lady,” said Mr Roach.

“They asked questions about what she looked like and I said ‘she looks like an old lady’, it wasn’t until we found out her name and told them that we saw them starting to go into each room to check residents again and it was still another 10 minutes after that until they came out,” he said.

“Maybe they need alarms on the doors like those swan ones you can get, or do bed checks more often or have a video intercom so they can stay and talk to you properly,” Christopher Roach said.

Angela Raguz, general manager of residential care, HammondCare which recently took over Strathearn, confirmed staff were scared, but said she was thankful Mr Roach and his friends raised the alarm.

“First and foremost we do take this very seriously, the resident is fine and we’ve been in close contact with the resident’s family and they are comfortable with how we are managing the incident,” said Ms Raguz.

“Staff were fearful and contacted the police in the first instance because they thought someone was trying to get into the facility rather than someone trying to tell them something,” said Ms Raguz.

“I have no doubt it was very confronting for them (Mr Roach and his friends) to see there was a person outdoors who was elderly and frail and that would make them feel it was not the right thing and I completely have that empathy for them and again want to say I thank them for persisting,” she said.

“We understand that their motive was to do the right thing and we now need to look at how we can better respond quickly and more appropriately,” she said.

Ms Raguz said they take the matter seriously, are conducting an investigation and will review their practices.

“The matter is being investigated by our internal quality safety and risk team to make sure we don’t leave any stone unturned,” she said.

“I think the main question people will have is, ‘why didn’t we know she was out there?’ and it is a fair question,” she said.

“In brand new facilities we have an alert system so that staff know when someone has stepped outside, we don’t have them alarmed all day, but the older facilities don’t have the infrastructure to support that, so then it is an option of do you lock all the doors and restrict people’s freedom or do you manage that risk by assessing each resident and what their family wants?”

“This is the step that needs to happen now to make sure everybody’s individual assessment gives us an indication of ‘what would it mean if Mary goes outside in the middle of the night, are we confident that she would be safe or does someone need to be there quickly or does her door need to be locked at night?””

“In this instance this family doesn’t want their mum to be locked up, so the job we have is how we do that and still make sure she is safe,” she said.

“We want to respect the rights of our residents to be able to go outside, in some cases even at night, it’s not a place where people are incarcerated, so that freedom of movement is really important for us to maintain,” she said.

“We want to make sure we don’t go the other way after an incident and decide to lock everyone inside, but we also need to look at our systems so they are robust enough to manage safety,” she said.

“We will continue to improve all of the care that is provided and work with people who are living there, their families and the community at large to provide the best care we can and things will go wrong, we know that, but it’s about how we partner with residents, families and friends to get the balance right between freedom of residents and safety of residents and that is ongoing and varies with each resident,” she said.

“We will be open and honest and know there will be issues from time to time, but our motivation is we really want to do the right thing and look after people well,” she said.

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