Salvos Exit Aged Care: What It Means for Residents and Staff

It is an organization that Australians have trusted to look after our most vulnerable for generations. Now the Salvation Army has made the massive call to completely walk away from residential aged care and home care across the country. Over the next two years, they plan to hand over their centers to specialise providers so they can refocus on things like homelessness and domestic violence. Naturally, the news is going to make a lot of families with loved ones in Salvo's care feel pretty anxious about what happens next. It also raises some serious questions about how tough it has become for charities to survive under current government funding and strict regulations. Joining us now to explain the situation and the decision is Steve Speciali from the Salvation Army. Steve, thank you so much for your time. It's a pleasure, Carla. Good to speak with you. All right, Steve, can you walk us through why the Salvos has made this decision, this big decision to walk away from aged care? You know, a bit of history too. I'll get to a bit of our second time having to come to terms with a role in the residential aged care sector. On this occasion, we decided that it was important to review the way we continue to operate in the sector and whether we're the right people to be doing it. There are a number of factors. It's never just one thing. We have 19 centres around Australia. And when it comes to holding 19 properties, we looked at the capital works required to keep them in shape over the next decade, whether it's a code of pain to a renovation at one site or right through to potential for the rebuilds and the heavy end of things. So that's a primary consideration. It's a lot of money. Everyone who's done a reno or even a build knows that the prices in this space of construction are moving rapidly. The other consideration is that when it comes to the operational excellence that we try to achieve, is it is becoming harder because the regulations are becoming enhanced. Now, that's only in line with community expectations as well. And we understand that. So we don't argue with rising community expectations of care and support and how they're reflected in government regulation. We simply have to ask ourselves if we can keep pace with those requirements while still being able to provide the vast array of support services we do for Australians doing it tough. And when we sat down and reviewed that, you know, we had to make what is a hard call for us to make. But we also realised that if our aged care services, the residential aged care services can be passed to an organisation that as best as it can shares our human values, but it's also more focused on the delivery of aged care services rather than doing the number of things that the cell does do in the community. But that actually sets the people who are residents in the aged care settings up for a better future. Steve, how can you guarantee that that's going to happen? I imagine this will go through some sort of tender process or you'll have to, you know, vet whoever is that come in, come through to take over the reins or will be a case of, you know, the highest bidder. How's that going to work? No, we're not after the highest bidder. That's not the way the Salvation Army walks in the Australian community. What we will do is probably in the first quarter of 2027, we will go to the market and invite officers but our criteria for who we intend to deal with will be very much driven by Salvation Army values. Straight up, there are no guarantees that as long as our search begins with cell those values as part of the framework for evaluating approaches and offers, then I think we set ourselves up to provide the residents with the best ongoing care possible. It's a very heavily governed sector. So, you know, the escalation of the standards required to provide service, it sort of is one of those rising tides with you saw both scenarios. It will look very closely at those who would like to take on the responsibility from us. Okay, because, I mean, it's lovely to hear that. It's great to hear that it's reassuring to hear that. Because I know that there will be a lot of families with loved ones in your facilities who will be feeling nervous hearing this today. I guess what is your immediate message to them other than what you've just said, you know, because they're the ones that are living through this. - Absolutely. We've been at the standards making with the residents and their carers over the past two weeks, this week in particular, to make sure that they hear it from us that it's not just an announcement that it's a conversation and that'll be ongoing with each of the centres. We're not in a rush, by the way. We'll be opening up to offers and conversations early in 2027, but the process will take as long as it has to take for us to go through and get the best outcome, not just for the Salvation Army, but for the residents. And we'll do that while keeping a really sharp focus on the quality of care that's provided and also the wellbeing of our staff. So these are going to be moved to as a going concern. We're not closing anything. We want to keep the residential aged care facilities that we have now in the best shape possible as they move on to their next ownership. - Speaking right now to Steve Spetziali from the Salvation Army. Earlier this week, Steve, we spoke to National Seniors Australia and we looked back on a year of the Federal Government's aged care act. They made it pretty clear that there is a long way to go in improving aged care in Australia. I know that you weighed up all of these things as to why the decision, the reason the impetus to making this decision, but how much of it came down to those things that have been flagged 12 months on with the aged care act, rising costs and red tape and staffing regulations under this current system. - Yeah, I think the reality that we deal with every service we provide, every support we provide from family and domestic violence, to homelessness, to using our adult services, we always operate in highly regulated environments. And so we should, we're dealing with people's wellbeing, with people's lives. And so we actually accept that there should be a never ending to shoot that high standards in this area. Now question is, can we go with it? Or are we better to look towards, I guess, partnering with and then handing over the care of our residents to those with greater well with all, to keep adding to the service standards? It becomes a question of who's best to care for people into the future, and that's where we evaluated it in the right of that decision. - Speaking of the people that are most important to you, obviously those residents, but also I think of your staff, I think of the existing care staff and nurses. What will happen to them during this period is as business as usual, we'll be able to hand over that staff, is that the hope? - Absolutely, absolutely. You know, it's the case is, we want to make sure everyone at each of our standards feels completely valued from those who are in-age care, and our staff as well. Anyone who's had the opportunity to be with a relative in our one of our environments understands, the close relationships that exist between the residents and the staff and the careers who are looking after your mum or dad. So it's absolutely a case if we will continue to keep a sharp focus on the welfare of everybody, and we will look to make sure that the standards and sales are operating with great care and effectiveness and hand over to those who will take them forward. - I completely appreciate the values of the Salvation Army and that you want to get back to your, I guess, core focus and the focus being around homelessness issues like that and domestic violence. I just wonder whether it's become too difficult to deliver quality-age care services in the current environment because you know, you talk about the fact that there's hundreds of millions of dollars of residential-age care funds were budgeted by the federal government that have gone unspent. Would that even have made a difference in your decision? - I think that it's a case of the entities or the organisations that are positioned best in this space are the ones that have the wear with all the ability to scale to manage the environment. As a charitable organisation, we weren't able to go down to the bank or raise debt to keep up with the requirements as they exist. So, you know, we have to at some point understand or for us realise that we might not be best equipped to take these into the future. But there are organisations that are and there are those that have the same values and that's the road that we've chosen to take on this occasion. And it's something we did believe it or not around 21 years ago in the parts of Australia. The time came then to review whether we should stay involved as well in very soon. of circumstances at the time existed, and we made a choice to move out of some, particularly in Southern Australia, and now the opportunity or the need to at least review where we are with those that remain has come around again. And I think everybody appreciates that the cost haven't gone backwards in the last 20 years. And some of the calculation we just have to make is obvious to us. I appreciate Steve that you're obviously dealing with this as sensitively as you possibly can, because there are a lot of families who are listening today with loved ones who are in your facilities who trust the salvos, who know and love the organisation for what you have done for the vulnerable over generations. And so I can imagine that this will be difficult for them as it has been for you to have to make the decision. And I say you, I mean, the Salvation Army. So I appreciate you sort of straightening the couple of those things out for us, but it does feel like, you know, you going back to your core values and the core parts of the organisation is just becoming possible to navigate everything around aged care for what it is for everyone else. So I do appreciate your time. Thanks, Carla. We'll take care. We'll take time. We'll look after everybody in the process, and I appreciate your time and interest today. No problems there. Steve, especially from the Salvation Army, it does sound a lot like the current environment for delivering aged care. It doesn't matter who it is, it's become so difficult to navigate that non-for-profits, charitable institutions like the salvos simply cannot manage it. He's talked about raising debts and being able to do that. You can't do that when you're a non-for-profit, right? And then it means that it goes on to the shoulders of dedicated providers, be they private or not for profit. And I don't think, you know, losing those options are a good thing. It isn't. It narrows the pull down, and then he end up with monopolies of organisations running facilities that may not necessarily have heart in their best interests. I do hope, so that is a very cynical point of view, but I do hope that this is not the situation.