How aged care leaders can reduce the stigma around incontinence
Lesley Barton, National Clinical and Training Manager
A resident who avoids the dining room isn’t being difficult — they’re managing shame. Incontinence affects nearly half of aged care residents, yet stigma often outweighs the physical challenge. Here’s how leaders can build a culture of dignity-first continence care.
Latest News
Quality of care through hospitality
Over the past four or five years, something has quietly changed in aged care dining rooms: the line between care and catering has blurred, and care-minute requirements are now sitting alongside that shift. This piece looks at what happens when funding categories meet the reality of the table — and why the parts of a mealtime that matter most are often the parts no metric was built to capture.
Beyond the chair: how furniture choices shape aged care environments
Aged care furniture needs to feel residential while supporting resident independence, staff safety, infection control and durability. Wentworth Care Director Tamlyn Carr shares what providers should consider when designing spaces.
Hayley Campbell, Content Writer
The six-year risk: the link between frailty and dementia
New research from UQ shows physical frailty can bring forward a dementia diagnosis by up to six years, giving aged care leaders a clear chance to act early.
Marion Piper, Contributor
Mandatory reporting won’t fix elder abuse. Boards still need to answer for it.
No national Human Rights Act. No registration scheme for aged care workers. And no consensus on mandatory reporting. Elder abuse exposes governance gaps operators can’t outsource to policy – leaving boards to close them in the meantime.
Marion Piper, Contributor
Boards that ignored speak-up systems are now the regulator’s next target
A collapsed whistleblower system, a CEO whose values didn’t fit the organisation, and a board that found out only when the regulator did. A new case study shows why 2026’s aged care laws treat speak-up programs as a governance failure, not a compliance checkbox.
Marion Piper, Contributor
Contributors
Hayley Campbell - Content Writer
"Hayley Campbell is a mental health and healthcare copywriter who believes the best stories start with people."
Atlas McNeil - National Clinical and Training Manager
"Lesley Barton is the National Clinical and Training Manager at Bunzl & Atlas McNeil Healthcare Community, with over 40 years of healthcare experience."
Yvette Willison - Content Writer
"Yvette is an avid storyteller with a working knowledge base in the Allied Health, Disability and Aged Care sectors."
Rise Up Group - Senior Catering Operations Specialist
"Lindsey O’Grady is a chef and aged care hospitality specialist with 40 years’ experience."
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News
Standardised failure: how the new NDIS bill sacrifices participants for budget repair
Marion Piper, Contributor As NDIS reforms repeat the design flaws of aged care’s algorithmic funding failures, Disability Discrimination Commissioner Rosemary Kayess warns that providers will bear the fallout of standardised models that sacrifice individual needs for budget repair.
Why KPMG’s whistleblower failure should concern every aged care provider
Marion Piper, Contributor Following KPMG’s high-profile whistleblower governance failure, Australian aged care directors face heightened scrutiny. Under the new Aged Care Act, leaders can be personally fined up to $165,000 for non-compliant reporting systems, even if the organisation itself escapes regulatory action.
Support at Home’s biggest test: Can government turn reform promises into real-world care access?
Lauren Liao, Contributor A survey of older Australians has highlighted growing frustration with Support at Home, revealing challenges around waiting times, complexity, provider availability and out-of-pocket costs.
Why aged care’s IAT human override could become the next bottleneck
Lauren Liao, Contributor OPAN’s CEO Craig Gear warns the IAT’s human override could recreate the bottleneck it’s meant to fix. With three changes in weeks and Minister Rae unable to confirm trigger criteria or timeframes, boards need to start managing the internal exposure themselves.
Navigating the new horizon: Australia’s first cross-setting quality framework
Lauren Liao, Contributor This new cross-setting framework gives aged care leaders an evidence-based blueprint to measure quality across the entire continuum of care, helping organisations bridge the gap between health services and residential settings to deliver truly integrated, person-centred outcomes.
The Arcare story is about yesterday. The bigger story is what’s next.
Lauren Liao, Contributor While the headlines have focused on allegations surrounding additional service fees via HELF, the more important question for boards and executives is whether the sector has fully understood what the new Aged Care Act is asking providers to become.
Senate passes bill to restore human override in aged care assessments
Hayley Campbell, Content Writer The Senate has backed a bill to restore assessor override to the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT). Whether it becomes law or not, providers are already working within the gap between funding decisions and responsibility for safe care.
Topic
Training is the answer to the aged care workforce crisis
Australia’s aged care sector is under pressure, and the workforce shortage is only growing. Training is one of the most effective tools we have to address it, and flexible, accessible pathways are making it easier than ever for people to step up.
WHO dementia prevention guidelines: what they mean for aged care leaders
The World Health Organisation has updated its dementia prevention guidelines for the first time since 2019, expanding the recognised risk factors from 12 to 20. Professor Kaarin Anstey, the only Australian on the WHO guideline panel, explains what has changed and what it means for aged care.
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