Hands up if you have a resident waiting for a home care package?
When I asked a room full of Village Professionals to raise their hand if they had a resident in their retirement village waiting for home care, every hand went up.
Not some. All.
Considering there are close to 90,000 older Australians waiting for a home care package – this show of hands was as confronting as it wasn’t surprising.
Then I asked: Who has a resident waiting just to be assessed for home care? Not a single hand went down.
These past three weeks I have asked this question in each city where we have held a Professional Development Day. Adelaide. Perth. Brisbane. Melbourne. And Sydney, twice.
The results have been the same.
Across the country, we have retirement village residents, in their retirement village home, waiting for the care they have been assessed as eligible to receive.
I often reflect a retirement village is a microcosm of wider society. When incivility peaked post COVID, triggering banks, supermarkets and airlines to ask customers to treat their staff with respect – retirement villages experienced the same with the behaviour toward staff and fellow residents.
Now, retirement villages reflect the wider challenge we face with Australians waiting for home care – at a point in their lives when they don’t have time on their side.
The Weekly Source’s SATURDAY magazine reported the wait list for home care is expected to reach 130,000 come 1 November when the Support at Home reforms are set to commence. See left.
I read of the commencement of a Senate inquiry into the home care delays. While this might seem timely, who is the messenger that tells people in need they need to continue to wait?
For Village Professionals, the “waiting game” isn’t abstract. It’s daily reality. We’re not just watching it—we’re managing it, resident by resident. And when residents move past home care needs into aged care territory, they’re met with another wall: full facilities, everywhere. That’s not changing anytime soon.
The truth is, whether we planned for it or not, we are now part of the care economy. Our residents are—and will continue to be—receiving care and support in our villages. In some ways, we’re edging back toward the “low care” model of years past.
We can’t let “care” become a passive, reactive service we only step into when the need is urgent. We can flip the script—making wellbeing the priority, with care as the safety net.
Wellbeing isn’t a tagline on a brochure. It’s not a once-a-month social event. It’s a strategy—one that can strengthen resilience, connection, and quality of life before residents reach crisis point.
That’s the conversation we’re taking from our Professional Development Days into the Village Summit. Retirement villages have the reach, the trust, and the daily connection to act now. We can’t just be places to live. We must be places to thrive—where wellbeing is built in, not bolted on.
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