Celebrating 100 Years of Providing Exceptional Care to the Aged Community in Sydney [Interview][Transcript]
Guest: Lesley Jordan
Presenter: Wayne Bucklar
Guest Bio: Lesley Jordan is the Chief Executive Officer of Twilight Aged Care. She is a senior executive with over 30 years’ experience gained predominantly in the government and not for profit health and aged care sectors. Her experience extends beyond general management to include a track record for developing sustainable innovative clinical programs, significant support to organisational governance and operational strategies to drive major organisational change. She is well acquainted with the complexities of the modern healthcare system with my most recent appointments including CEO in Aged Care, senior manager in NSW Health and General Manager of a large national Not for Profit. She has served as a clinician, nursing leader, mentor, manager, educator and now senior executive so have a broad understanding of the elements that support a quality health care system.
Segment overview: In today’s Health Supplier Segment, we welcome Chief Executive Officer of Twilight Aged Care Lesley Jordan who is here to share more details about their accommodations and services. Lesley is passionate about bring elements of clinical governance that currently support the acute care sector into the residential aged care space to ensure quality aged care services are available to those that need them. Twilight Aged Care aims to to provide guidance to those who may need aged care in every step of the way. They have four beautiful homes across the Sydney region, offering all aspects of aged care, dementia specific care and palliative care. All residents are encouraged to participate in an appropriate level but they also respect freedom of choice and encourage independence wherever possible. Their programs are designed to promote social, physical and mental wellbeing and form part of the holistic care of our residents.
Transcription
Health Professional Radio – Twilight Aged Care
Wayne Bucklar: You’re listening to Health Professional Radio. My name is Wayne Bucklar and joining me today is Lesley Jordan Chief Executive Officer of Twilight Aged Care. Lesley welcome to Health Professional Radio.
Lesley Jordan: Thanks Wayne.
W: Now Lesley can you fill us in about Twilight Aged Care? What it is you do and what geographic footprint do you service?
L: Sure. Twilight Aged Care is one of the oldest not for profit community aged care providers in Australia actually, we celebrated our centenary last year. And we provide aged care to the North Shore of Sydney. We started a hundred years ago with our first time at Mosman, Onslow House, we no longer have that. But we now have four facilities Mosman, Beecroft, Hunters Hill and Gladesville, and we’re currently building a new facility at Gordon.
W: Lesley can you give us a picture of the types of care you provide because aged care as you know has got a number of segments. So just for our audience can you fill us in on where you fit in the pattern?
L: So Twilight Aged Care provide predominantly residential aged care. So we have a hundred and sixty beds across our four facilities. Within those facilities we provide obviously dementia care, palliative care and very high quality home like aged care services.
W: Okay. Lesley with your North Shore of Sydney facilities, that’s the only area you service?
L: Correct. So we’ve only operated on the North Shore of Sydney and that’s where we only ever intend to operate.
W: And it’s a nice spot to be I have to say as well.
L: Oh absolutely, absolutely.
W: Did I hear you talked about in place aging, so home care?
L: No, we don’t do any home care. We only do a residential aged care at the moment. So that’s basically people coming in to our homes and, well moving into our homes and living there.
W: Now Lesley most of our audience are clinicians at one kind or another, about 95% of them, Facebook tells me. So we have a lot of acute care and a lot of aged care staff who have a listen to us. Is there a message you’d like clinician to take away today having heard you?
L: For me, and the message to take away is that the aged care sector really at a time of incredible change and growth. And also a need to actually engage with clinicians across a whole range of areas, in order to provide really good quality care. It’s not a very sexy industry and a lot of people get turned off thinking it’s a very depressing area to work in. I’ve made a conscious decision to go into, back into aged care at the end of my career, because I thought that that’s where I could make the biggest change and support the changes required. For me the message for clinicians would be that despite the fact that this people are old, it’s actually very exciting and interesting area to work in. Many of these people come in to our facilities with life’s stories and history. And a little bit of dementia that’s thrown in the mix doesn’t make a very, very exciting workplace.
W: Lesley in every industry, there are misconceptions and it’s my favorite question to ask. What are the biggest misconceptions that exist for you amongst your customers, clients, patients that drive you nuts and keep you awake at night?
L: For me as I said earlier, that aged care is not a sexy industry. And I continually get frustrated with people’s preconceived ideas of what aged care is. As I said it’s undergone incredible change over the last 20 years and continues to grow and evolve. And we the regulation, it’s becoming a really exciting area to work in, there’s lot of changes, lots of opportunity to build, to have an impact on someone’s life at the end and making it comfortable, reducing their symptoms of dementia, helping families deal with all of those issues of aging parents – is just for me an incredible opportunity and I feel very, very fortunate to work in the area.
W: It’s been a pleasure having you with us today Lesley. I’ve been talking to Lesley Jordan Chief Executive Officer of Twilight Aged Care. Lesley how can people get in touch with you?
L: We have our website, which is www.twilight.org.au, alternatively our numbers are 9414 4400 and that’s a Sydney number.
W: So let me just give you those again, listeners it’s twilight.org.au or if you want to call, it’s Sydney Australia 02 9414 4400. Lesley thank you for being with us today. If you’ve missed my conversation with Lesley Jordan, Chief Executive Officer of Twilight Aged Care, the good news is on our website we have both the transcript of the interview, we also have an audio archive on SoundCloud and on YouTube. So if you’ve missed it or just joined us, please head off to www.hpr.fm and have a look on the Health Professional Radio website and you’ll be able to both read and listen to my interview today. This is Wayne Bucklar, you’re listening to Health Professional Radio.