Experience

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.

Dianne Shepherd has spent 20 years watching older Australians run out of cash while sitting on million-dollar homes. She says Support at Home doesn’t close the funding gap and that aged care providers are building care plans on assumptions that won’t hold.

The top home care package funds 20 hours a week. Advanced dementia needs round-the-clock supervision. What happens in the remaining 148 hours? Rosie Fitzgerald can tell you.

Retirement villages aren’t a lifestyle product: they’re health infrastructure. Daniel Gannon makes the case that without planning reform and supply investment, the pipeline crisis feeding hospital strain and aged care pressure will only deepen.

When public funding shapes what you can say, honest critique becomes a calculated risk. Russell Bricknell, CEO of Juniper Care, names the structural forces driving provider silence – and the viability crisis quietly narrowing who aged care can afford to serve.

HammondCare’s Marie Alford shares what retirement village operators should be doing now to support residents living with dementia – from wayfinding to wellbeing coordinators to community partnerships.

With registered nurse supply a structural problem and care minutes accountability locked in, Lutheran Services’ Transition to Practice Program offers a replicable model for providers tired of losing ground to the external recruitment market.

Jennifer Andrewes worked as a communications expert in government. She’s seen a lot of leadership approaches. It was those she encountered post sharing her diagnosis who landed what is the substance of leading. She’s now walking the walk, in more ways than one.

Far from the sterile books on power plays in leadership, Jennifer Andrewes, a long-time government professional in communications, shares walking a different walk. Vibrantly candid, kind and competent, Andrewes’ story is one of honesty and grit in sticking to your values and having each others’ backs.