Pat Sparrow: A woman on a mission to amplify the voices of older Australians

This article was first published as our Hello Leaders printed publication cover story. We thank Pat Sparrow for her time and support.

It’s been six months since she stepped into the role of Chief Executive at COTA Australia, representing the voices of older Australians. Pat Sparrow has been around the block and brings with her a wealth of knowledge and experience in a role that she says brings her ‘full circle’ in her career. 

Having worked as an aged care adviser for the Federal Government, with providers at ACSA, and now with consumers at COTA Australia – she has seen many different angles of aged care. 

Hello Leaders sat down with Pat Sparrow and spoke with her about her journey so far, how she sees the role of COTA in the current aged care landscape, her approach to leadership and the hurdles of women in the sector.

Looking at the different roles you’ve had, what are the similarities and what do you feel are the main differences? 

“For me, it’s always been about the older person at the core and making sure that older people are getting the best services. That goes way back to, I think it was a Four Corners program in the 1980s, that was about the Home and Community Care program, which was a brand new program at the time. 

That really spoke to me, about what’s actually important and what the community should be doing, and that sort of got me hooked in the whole space. 

There’s more in common than not across the roles that I’ve had. It’s been about how do you improve services and support and life for older people. It’s about how you support the individual person.

Whether that’s through improving service delivery and working with providers to support them and the important work that they’re doing, or like now advocating directly and working with older people to advocate on their behalf and make sure that government is hearing their voice. 

So perhaps [this role at COTA] brings everything I’ve done together. My understanding of service delivery, understanding policy and bringing those things together to make sure that older people’s voices are heard.”

With more than 20 years experience in aged care you have seen a lot of changes impacting older Australians. In your view, what has changed for the better in aged care over that time and where are we still falling short?

“Aged care has seen a series of incremental improvements. One for me that was really important was the 2017 change for packages to be assigned to an older person and for them to have more say over how they were delivered and which provider they used. 

There were lots of implementation issues with that but I think that was really important in terms of how aged care needs to grow into the future. The other things that change did was it exposed the waiting list and how many people were not able to get services and that had been hidden in the past. So I think that’s really an important shift.

More recently, the star ratings system is representative of a greater transparency in the system. I know it has been much talked about, some people are fans and some people think we should walk away from it. But people are entitled to having information, whether that’s the older person themselves because they’re making a decision about the service that they want or whether you’re a carer or family member, who wants to find out about the service that your loved one or the important person in your life is receiving.

A lot of money has been put into the system, which has been terrific and governments of both persuasions have done that, but we know the system is still not right. And what we saw through the Royal Commission is there is still so much work to do in this space.

One of the biggest things that came out of it for me, that’s a foundational thing for aged care is the [need to] move to an act based on human rights. We’ve seen that work well in disability services where there’s a focus on rights and the structure is quite different in recognition of that. So I think if we can get that underpinning right, from the assessment and how that’s undertaken and the outcome, from how the complaints and quality system works. For me that’s the real challenge.”

How do you see COTA’s role in the aged care landscape and what is your vision for the organisation?

“One of the things people do think about COTA is aged care. But we work across all of the areas that impact on an older person. We’re really active in the retirement income space, in health, cost of living, housing, you know, all of those things that impact on an older person, mature age employment is what we are working across. And for me, as a long time advocate for a better life for older people, it’s kind of the ideal job for me.

The thing that I really want to do is build, obviously COTA, but also a great reputation that is listened to in government. I want to keep that going and build on that. I want to make sure that what we do really well is engage with older people. And that we’re amplifying their voices in all of the areas that we’re working in, so that people are hearing directly, what older Australians are thinking.

Another aspect I really want to focus on is ageism and age discrimination. We see it everywhere, in all sorts of different policy areas and portfolio areas. 

Whether it’s somebody, you know, can’t get employed, because they’re “too experienced” or “overqualified”, or there’s a medical treatment or procedure that’s denied them because they’re too old. Ageism impacts everybody all the time and so it’s really important that we address that.

It’s not the last big ‘ism’ and I wouldn’t say for a minute that other ‘isms’ are fully addressed, You know racism and sexism are still rife. But we need ageism to be considered in the same way and have the same focus to address it.”

At the start of your career did you ever imagine that you would be in a leadership role in this space?

“I wanted to be a journalist when I first went to university. Then I got into the public service in South Australia and I kind of really found that policy was my thing. I thought I’d probably be in a back room doing policy for the rest of my life. But then opportunities transpired and I wanted to keep learning more and doing more, and doing better. I took opportunities as they came up and here I am, Chief Executive of an amazing organisation

Some leaders will tell you they really planned everything out, but I didn’t. I took advantage of opportunities when they came and it was always based on what I was interested in doing. It wasn’t so much that I thought I wanted to be a CE one day, it was ‘I can do more’.” 

How has your leadership changed over the years with age and experience? 

“When you first become a leader, it’s about yourself as much as anything. And you tend to talk about yourself more and use the phrases ‘I’ and ‘my’. As my leadership skills grew I became much more focused on how I foster and build talent in a team. How do I let other people shine. That has come with maturity and a security about who I am and what I can bring to an organisation.”

What do you believe to be the most important qualities or traits of a great leader?

“I’m a collaborative person, so I really want to work with the team and learn from them. Everybody in the organisation makes a valuable contribution, whatever their job is, so hearing from people about what’s important and what they think about things is really important and using that to make decisions. 

For me another part of leadership is to be authentic. I don’t say I was ever unauthentic, but I only wanted people to see what I wanted to present. Now I approach it much more as ‘this is who I am’ and we have good days and bad days.”

What is your biggest challenge as a leader?

“Being a female I would say balance. I’m not saying that’s only a female issue, but as a female leader with a child, balancing being a mum and partner, balance is important. 

Being a leader is challenging and as I’ve gotten older I’m more likely to prioritise things that I need to do for myself than I used to. Because I realised that if I don’t look after myself and I’m unwell or I become stressed and things in the other part of my life aren’t running, then that really impacts on being a leader.”

How have you dealt with the perception of being a woman in a leadership role?

“I definitely know about the frustrations that women will talk about. Like being in a meeting and making a comment that nobody reacts to and then 10 or 15 minutes later a male colleague will say the same thing and it’s the best thing anyone’s ever heard. Those kinds of things are true.

I didn’t feel like I got judged as a female until I was a CEO. I actually went to a women in leadership event early in my career, and the person who was running it said something that I have adopted ever since: you are who you are and people know who you are. So don’t try and be something you’re not. 

That really helped me at the time in my career, when I learned that because I think we were at a stage where a lot of people felt that female leaders had to imitate men.  I’m a female later and I bring the same amount of qualities and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. I think we need to be looking at what is good about any leader.”

What do you think are the benefits of having women in leadership?

“It’s really about having good people and leadership isn’t it? So having a different perspective is really important and women do bring different perspectives. So it is important that those perspectives are brought and valuing what’s good about anyone’s leadership. 

You can have women who aren’t good leaders just like you can have men who aren’t good leaders. So it is about the individual. But I do think that women bring different perspectives because we have different life experiences. So bringing that rounded view to leadership from a female perspective is really important.”

Who has inspired you as a leader?

“My mother, who passed recently, always told me to tell the truth and do my best. I remember her giving me that advice before my first Royal Commission appearance, which I was very nervous about. She’s always been inspirational.

I’m also inspired by people like Nelson Mandela who again focused on people and what they would bring and not passing on prejudices. And another person who I think is quite remarkable is Julia Gillard. She’s a very inspirational modern leader who put up with more than anyone should have to. Watching her lead with great dignity and her resilience was quite extraordinary.”