Are we at One Minute to Midnight, as RAC management heads for the door along with staff?

The anonymous CompliSpace survey just released of 1,110 aged care staff across more than 300 locations reveals that 11% of workers have lost their entire management team in the past 12 months, and 45% of the 300+ locations have lost half or more of their management.

Who is replacing them?

Logically, in most cases the staff elevated up have probably not been ready for this responsibility under normal circumstances, but these are not normal times.

The new managers are taking over when staff are exhausted, understaffed and disillusioned about things getting better any time soon.

All shifts across the country, we are told, are at least 20% understaffed. Quality care is no longer the objective; just a level of care is the target.

On site at a home last week, a senior Registered Nurse told me she has been working 11 to 12 hours a day (with no extra pay) for so long she can't remember, because she can't leave both her residents and her support staff in an unsafe position.

She also said she can do this being in her mid-fifties (with older children) but it is now affecting her health. She is at one minute to midnight.

When will others have exhausted their reservoir of care and goodwill?

The CompliSpace survey answers the question. Management teams are departing.

And this intelligence and wisdom, this IP, can't be replaced. It is a spiral to the end of quality aged care for years if the brakes are not applied now.

What is the brake? It has to be money in the short term to encourage the existing staff to stay. There is no supply of new staff – trained or otherwise. Retention has to be the most urgent task in aged care.

Where does the money come from? The politicians are between a rock and hard place if they have to find the $4B a year that a 25% pay increase will require. They could pay it to solve today, but it will lock in Government funding forever and not really solve the longer-term problem.

A short-term dollar fix may have to be the solution (again), and then the introduction of our Plan B – customers paying for their accommodation and daily living expenses, and the Government funding care – is the only strategy available.

If 45% of facilities have lost their management team in the past 12 months, will they lose the other half in the next 12 months? Highly likely if we don’t see immediate action, as the clock ticks to midnight.