Switch Leaves Shortfall For Nursing Beds
Newcastle Herald
Saturday August 4, 2001
LOCHINVAR'S St Joseph's Nursing Home will have its 21 beds switched to low care hostel positions and transferred to Swansea.
The switch will mean the residents in the facility will have to find alternative nursing home accommodation in the Maitland region.
The Sisters of St Joseph, who run the nursing home, say that because the 21 nursing home bed licences were provided before 1997, they can be converted to low care hostel beds.
The Sisters have promised to find accommodation for all residents prior to the closure.
The Catholic order plans to move the converted beds to Swansea's St Teresa's Convent.
The Sisters built five cottages for retired nuns at the Swansea site about five years ago.
They now plan to develop a partnership with the Southern Cross company to extend the Swansea facility.
Sister June Flynn said that while no contracts had been signed, the plan was for the Catholic order to provide the land and the company to finance construction of a new low care facility. Further meetings are scheduled for next week.
`That is what we are moving towards, but we haven't got the final decision,' Sister Flynn said yesterday.
`We are still talking with our Sisters about it at the moment. We have Sisters living there (at Swansea) already in a complex that we built and we can increase the numbers on the site.'
Sister Flynn said the Swansea hostel would cater for retired nuns and members of the public.
`It is an area with great need for low care beds. It is very under-bedded, whereas the Maitland government area, according to the figures, is overbedded almost by two.'
According to Federal Government ratios, the Maitland area has nine too few nursing home beds and 12 too many hostel beds.
Cessnock, home to the Allandale aged care facility, is seen as having 251 extra nursing home beds and hostel beds.
Lake Macquarie, where the new Swansea facility is located, has reportedly got 99 extra nursing home beds and 157 too few hostel beds.
Aged Care Minister Bronwyn Bishop said the St Joseph's move was a good move.
But Federal Member for Hunter Joel Fitzgibbon believed it raised a number of issues for the Maitland area.
`It means that even though we are in relative terms better placed for high care than low care beds, we are still under-bedded in high care,' he said.
© 2001 Newcastle Herald
