Pennwood Aged Care

Creating a home-like, active environment is the focus at the Pennwood Aged Care Facilities.

Owned by the Serbian Community Welfare Associate of SA Inc, it was formed in 1993, when Pennwood was first built. It was the first multicultural aged care facility to operate in South Australia, providing a safe environment for refugees coming from Serbia and Hungary.

The two facilities are both headquartered in Adelaide, South Australia, with Pennwood Aged Care village located in the western suburb of Pennington, and Pennwood Green in the eastern suburb of Oakton. Pennwood has just begun running consumer directed care services to homes and offers 35 different packages to European people in western Adelaide.

Pennwood’s CEO Anne Brown says over 100 staff members work across both sites with 135 care recipients. Pennwood also has plans to expand in the near future.“We do intend to expand and we have purchased land at Pennington and are currently planning to purchase land at Oakden. Currently the Village has 60 beds and Oakden 40. We want to expand to 80 and 60 respectively. We need to apply for Bed Licenses this year. We also want to expand into home care services and eventually we’d like to have at least 60-80 home care packages.”

Pennwood is one of the first aged care facilities to adopt a new lifestyle model which encourages people to keep active and moving. The new Healthy Lifestyle Model adopted from the WHO encourages people to “walk till they die”. This sits alongside our Home Care Services living longer, living better model of care which has been promoted by Pennwood. The Australian government enables people to stay in their own homes, moving away from the old medical model where a nurse governed ward rounds and tasks.

“Australia now is moving towards a more dementia friendly home-like environment. Our government has invested a lot of money to change residential care facility environments to make them more home-like. Recently, we have engaged architects to assess and carry out environmental audits to move away from an institutional clinical look to a more home-like environment with home-like purposeful activities,” Brown says.

This more active lifestyle sees staff helping the care recipients with daily activities, rather than remaining in bed and having room services. Brown says doing this provides people with more purpose in life and, when they can get up in the morning, they feel more motivated to take part in events and to be of assistance to other people.

Pennwood Aged Care invests a lot of money and time into staff training. Recently some key staff completed the mental health first aid and dementia courses. Having the right skills is important to support care recipients who suffer from anxiety, dementia and memory loss. New technology within the medical sector has also helped to improve the services offered and allows staff to train and study on line.

Says Brown, “In the last two years we’ve introduced Leecare electronic care plans. Our industry is moving towards electronic communication systems to improve services, maintain privacy, and reduce our footprint as we are planning to be paperless. All our care plans are stored in electronic systems to enable consistent high-quality care.”

The new Aged Care National Standards which concentrate on performance indicators to manage quality and standards are top of mind. The three KPI’s that Pennwood is benchmarking against are restraint, skin integrity and weight loss associated with good diet and hydration. There is a trend within the industry that these areas be closely monitored and reported in a timely manner so that quality standards can be maintained. Clinical staff respond very quickly to pressure area breakdown and address areas of concern by assessing wounds. These days hospitals also have to report pressure sores. The model comes from the UK and is all about timely reporting. “That’s probably one of the biggest improvements in our health care setting as we rarely see pressure sores with improved manual handling, wound care products, electronic beds to change positions, and air mattresses. The national standards for key performance indicators are measured in the hospital and in residential care facilities to maintain quality standards of care.”

Pennwood Village has just introduced a Multimedia TV program to provide innovative, interactive solutions to help care recipients engage with all the events and activity programs for the day. The staff and care recipients birthdays are advertised on the big screen, which then transmits to TVs in the Lounge and on the TV in their rooms. Special events and trips can thus be seen by families and this makes the residents feel like celebrities.

The organisation also offers memory loss assistive programs, in addition to art and craft programmes, which have been well received. All the corridors have CCTV cameras so staff can observe unusual movements, especially at night should one accidently wander or fall. The corridors and dining rooms are colour coordinated so the care recipients can easily find and recognise their living area and make their way to and from activity room independently. The care recipients’ front door is painted The colours in which the front doors are painted, the listed name and number all ensure that residents easily recognise their own room.

Brown says gardening has also provided a strong sense of pride. “We’ve introduced a raised garden where care recipients can plant strawberries, vegetables and herbs. Being able to feel water, smell the soil and watch plants grow gives residents a sense of purpose in life; looking after the plants and giving them away to staff or visitors is inspiring and seen as a real act of love. It is extremely important to encourage gardening activities like these.”

Some of the other initiatives include exercise programs to help strengthen the core which helps reduce pain and the likelihood of falling. A range of mobility aides assist independence. A golf buggy, which is fun and useful for transporting people between activities, such as cultural events and walks in the park, adds to the Pennwood experience.

Pennwood marketing has been built on a strong reputation and word of mouth, although the organisation is still proactive in promoting to the wider public. “The industry media sites we currently use are DPS on line and we advertise in their Magazine Aged. We also use aged care online. We have a five star rating as an aged care facility, mainly because of the size, the environment, extensive gardens, and fresh European food cooked daily. Single room ensuites, highly skilled, bilingual staff are important aspects of our offering. We have photographs on these websites as well as a feature magazine story about being culturally and linguistically diverse. We also advertise on the Seniors Information and the MyAgedCare website. We have also got our own website, a Facebook page, and a LinkedIn presence. Finally, we collaborate with the Serbian Church,” Brown says.

Continuous improvement is a big focus at Pennwood and they regularly conduct surveys to get the feedback they need to make sure they are moving in the right direction. The aged care recipients are given surveys which include questions about the lifestyle, independence, food choices, staff customer service, and quality standards.  Education and Staff Development programs keep the staff up-to-date with their skills and their training. Pennwood has a strong focus on person centred care.

Brown says growth, profitability, maintaining high standards, keeping staff and care recipients healthy, engaged and fit are the big goals she wants to achieve in the next five years.

“Growth is going to be one of the big things for us. We need to expand to remain financially viable. We also need to maintain the quality and care but also the lifestyle that we’ve got for the care recipients and the staff. And keeping up the morale, we have social workers who come and talk to residents and staff regarding any mental health issues. Some of our staff were refugees from war torn Serbia so they are here to make a difference for their community. Eastern Europeans, in my opinion, have a wonderful work ethic and are savvy with new technology. These qualities along with ongoing training, confidence building and support allows them to excel in many areas” concludes Brown.