First strike in war over elderly
MONTEFIORE president David Freeman has used the release of the Gen08 report into older Jewish Australians to come out swinging against JewishCare, the Wolper Jewish Hospital and the Jewish Communal Appeal (JCA).
MONTEFIORE president David Freeman has used the release of the Gen08 report into older Jewish Australians to come out swinging against JewishCare, the Wolper Jewish Hospital and the Jewish Communal Appeal (JCA).
Freeman, who said he hasn’t read the full report, said that it reinforces previous studies that have shown the number of people above the age of 75 will increase over the next 20 years.
The report was released last week and suggests that between 2021 and 2031, there will be a 60-per-cent increase in the Jewish population aged 75-84 in NSW, which will place significant pressure on resources and funding.
Freeman said that, as a result, organisations in the community that service the ageing population need to consolidate into the Montefiore Home, which has more than 700 beds. “You have all of these tiny players like JewishCare and Wolper, which has 50 beds, and these organisations need to look where their futures lie.”
“These organisations have no future on their own. Governments want to deal with large organisations that have a full spectrum of activities, and the smaller organisations need to put the community ahead of their own interests. We are seeking greater consolidation of aged-care services, but we are running into the usual collective personal interest.”
Freeman didn’t hold back when he gave his opinion of JewishCare’s handling of aged-care facilities. “They (JewishCare) picked up 60 home-care packages and they should come under Montefiore.
“That particular activity overlaps with social welfare, but it is an aged-care activity and they are not specialist.”
JewishCare chief executive Claire Vernon did not want to be drawn into the fight.
“JewishCare is proud of the standard of its services and does not see it as helpful to the community or other organisations to comment otherwise.”
Freeman fired his second shot at the Wolper Jewish Hospital when he said that it is constrained by the size of its property and that it has no future.
But Wolper president David Golovsky said Freeman only has himself to blame. “The Wolper Hospital was planning to rebuild at the Montefiore in Randwick several years ago and we embraced that plan wholeheartedly,” Golovsky said.
“We were planning to build a hospital with a rehab, day surgery, consulting rooms, a pharmacy and a medical clinic that would have been state of the art, but at the advanced stage of planning Freeman became chairman and kiboshed the idea.
“Everyone was in agreement except for the chairman, who now believes this is the correct course of action,” Golovsky said.
He said Wolper has now completed a $12 million development in Woollahra for the community’s benefit. “We are running at full occupancy and running efficiently.
“We are going to plough the profits from the hospital back into the aged community and health care for Sydney’s Jewish community,” he said.
Freeman’s final shot was directed at the JCA, who he said is not actively trying to solve the problem.
“The JCA doesn’t want to go beyond a certain point and do anything substantial because [it is] afraid of the backlash.”
JCA president Peter Philippsohn said each service provider under its umbrella delivered services with professionalism and compassion. “The JCA-funded review of aged care by PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted in 2010-11 confirmed that pulling the community together is important, but it is also important to recognise that there are clear benefits from offering different forms of delivery of these critical services.”
“As a first step in improving the experience for our elderly, our aged-care providers have agreed on establishing a single point of contact to provide a seamless entry to all aged services,” Philippsohn said.
JOSHUA LEVI
Montefiore president David Freeman
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