After nine years of community leadership and effort, Advance Heathcote Inc has concluded that the Heathcote Dementia Village Working Group is unable to bring the forward thinking dementia village to Heathcote.
The community-based dementia care village model was described as presenting a workable solution to the complexities in the delivery of aged care in Australia.
The community had previously identified the project as a priority in the 2014-2017 Community Plan.
However, in December 2019, the Heathcote Health board was unable to secure the land and an operator for the village.
In March 2020, a site was secured and the search for an operator began.
After three years of negotiation with eight aged care providers, the project could not proceed.
With the arrival of COVID-19 in early 2020, aged care operators were placed under considerable pressure in staffing and operations, which stalled negotiations.
In the run-up to the 2022 Federal Election, the future funding model for aged care providers was unknown, which meant negotiations could not continue.
In June 2022, one of the major interested providers withdrew its expression of interest.
Heathcote Dementia Village Working Party chair Peter Main said aged care in Australia had changed significantly since the project’s starting point in 2014.
“We are disappointed with this result after years of planning and hard work,” he said.
“We understand many people in the community will also be disappointed that the project was not accomplished.
“The project dared to dream of alternate dementia care services in a rural setting to make a difference to the lives of people living with dementia.
“Unfortunately, our aspiration has been stymied by complex systemic issues facing Australian aged care services and the vagaries of government funding of the sector to make investment in the provision of our innovative dementia care service commercially unattractive.”