Experience

Public trust in aged care isn’t shaped by media alone. This article explores how leaders can strengthen organisational credibility through quality care, greater community visibility and sector-wide collaboration, creating authentic experiences and trusted voices that help close the media information gap.

NDIS and aged care providers are facing growing pressure to meet compliance expectations, manage costs and keep the focus on care. Lumary CEO Daniel Wyner says the organisations best prepared for the future will be those that understand their operations today.

IDDSI standardised texture-modified food and thickened fluids across aged care, changing how risk is described. But safety language alone hasn’t fixed rosters, training or communication pathways – and Standard 6 now demands the operating model catch up.

Workforce shortages remain a challenge, but technology is creating a new capability gap. Leaders who invest in continuous learning, workforce development and organisational adaptability will be best placed to navigate the future of Australia’s aged care sector.

Aged care providers ask where the money will come from before asking whether their kitchen system is already wasting it. Poor design costs more than budgets do – through waste, rework, complaints and burnt-out chefs carrying risk no one else sees.

A CEO’s line – aged care can survive, but not run like it’s 1985 – sent Lindsay O’Grady back to 1986: the year he started as a chef. Forty years on, the kitchen has changed. But has the model around it changed enough?

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.

Aged care’s greatest loss may not be funding or capacity — it may be the experienced leaders walking away. As reform fatigue deepens, Juniper Care CEO Russell Bricknell warns that exhaustion is driving talent from the sector and exposing the limits of an increasingly risk-averse system. From dignity of risk to lessons from Europe, he outlines why a fundamental shift in thinking may be needed to secure aged care’s future.

Registered nurse Jo Russell spent a decade trapped in a cycle of care burnout. Her experience highlights the trap that many high-performing workers face – and why it’s costing providers.

The promise of aged care reform was better care, stronger safeguards and a more sustainable future. But nine months into the new regulatory landscape, many providers say the cost of compliance is draining resources, exhausting teams and making growth harder to achieve. In this candid interview, Juniper CEO Russell Bricknell reflects on the realities of reform, the challenge of building new capacity, and why long-term solutions remain trapped by short-term decision-making.