Roland Naufal developed a reputation for innovation as CEO (2002 - 2006) of Villa Maria Society, an aged care organisation rated by BRW as one of Australia's top charities in 2005 and 2006. He has now joined villages.com.au as a regular contributor on ageing and aged care.
Challenging Conversations Create Change
Back in June 2005, I was CEO of one of Australia's largest charities and we were about to rebuild one of our biggest nursing homes. We had finalized the new design and lodged the plans with local council. We had even organised a party to celebrate.
It was then that I travelled overseas to gather ideas for the nursing home's furniture and fittings. Right at the end of my trip I landed at an organization called Humanitas in Rotterdam and my world got turned upside down. When I showed the Humanitas boss Hans Becker the plans for our new nursing home, he didn't even look at them. He simply asked: Is this the way that you would want to live as you grow older? No, I replied without needing to think, but I explained the existing nursing home had become run down and we needed to build a replacement. Yes, he said and asked again, but is this the way you would want to live as you grow older?
At that moment I realised that I had worked so hard for so long to get so comprehensively to a place I didn't want to be. I was building institutions for older people that I would not want to live in myself. I soon came to realise that almost all our thinking about growing older is filtered through the lens of problems; the problem of the ageing population, the health problems, the dementia problem, the problems of funding and staff shortages. When confronted with a series of problems, most of us play the engineer, the problem solver. We become focussed on fixing things. The twentieth century fix for the problem of growing old was the nursing home.
If you look hard enough, you will see the twenty first century world is different. Baby boomers are creating a paradigm shift in aged care by demanding diversity and choice. You will also see the current aged care service system is failing to respond to this change. Many organisations are still building residential aged care facilities that cater to organisational needs at the expense of individual identity.
These two little boxes represent 21 square metres and 15 square metres. The larger one is the average amount of space an architect allows you
to park your car at home. The smaller one is the average amount of space an architect allows for a nursing home room. We park our parents in places too small for our cars.
Is this the way I want live? No.
Well, my new nursing home never was built and I am no longer the CEO of an aged care organisation. I am working part-time and searching for ways to live older better. I find that almost everyone over 50 agrees that we have got most of our thinking about growing older wrong, badly wrong. People have ideas they want to talk about and they want to make changes. It is time for new leaders, new ideas and new service models to emerge. We can grow older a lot better.
