‘Home is where the heart’ is for elderly parents of disabled adults
A new $18 million residential development in Dandenong, Victoria, is the first service in Australia to allow elderly parents to move into a nursing home on the same property where their disabled children reside.
The collaboration was made between Victorian disability service Wallara and aged-care providers Wintringham to give older people a solution to their concerns for their disabled adult-children.
According to Wallara chief executive officer, Phil Hayes-Brown, the plan is definitely a first, reports The Age.
“We were seeing an increasing number of ageing parents who can’t provide care any longer,” Mr Hayes-Brown said. “Their families are often broken up and their children themselves end up in nursing homes.”
While 40 disabled adults have already moved into their new units, no elderly parents have yet taken up a room in the 60-bed Wintringham nursing home on the site; however, Wintringham chief executive, Bryan Lipmann, said those vacancies will soon be filled.
“For some of the elderly parents, there is at least reassurance. They’re not ready to sell their unit yet but their child is here and they know they can eventually come over. It’s almost like an insurance policy,” Mr Lipmann said.
He said the model had attracted widespread interest from other agencies. “There’s so much spin in this sector, but this time we’ve got something that really is new,” he said.
