Murrumbidgee Aged Care Network interviewed on ABC Riverina Radio

In the media

10 March 2025

This morning, Karen Hodgson, Steering Committee Lead of the Murrumbidgee Aged Care Network, a Care Together Program project, spoke with ABC Riverina’s Eddie Williams about the challenges small aged care providers face – and how they’re tackling them together.

With nine aged care operators across the Murrumbidgee, Snowy Mountains and Victorian border, these providers are forming a co-operative to ensure their survival. By sharing resources and support, they aim to ease the burden of compliance, recruitment and financial management – while keeping aged care local.

Karen’s message is clear: regional providers deliver exceptional care, but they can’t do it alone. The co-operative model offers a game-changing solution for aged care sustainability – not just in this region, but across Australia.

Listen online to the interview (2:11:53).

Read more about Murrumbidgee Aged Care Network in our project synopsis.

Media enquiries

Sue Frost, P&L Corporate Communications 0409718572

Transcript

Eddie Williams

When it comes to aged care, part of the challenge is just to keep doors open, whether that’s the Snowy River Hostel in Berrydale, Malacca Lodge in Eden. A lot have had to close in recent years. In Bombala, there’s been a success, success story with the community successfully working to reopen Caruana.

And now nine aged care operators in the regions, including in the Murrumbidgee, the Snowy Mountains and along the Victorian border, are coming together to fight for their survival. They’re creating a co-operative and spearheading it is Karen Hodgson from Cypress View Lodge in Coleambally.

Hi, Karen.

Karen Hodgson

Hi. How you going, Eddie? Good, thank you.

Eddie Williams

What are a couple of the biggest challenges that regional aged care facilities have just in trying to stay open?

Karen Hodgson

Well one of our main ones is just trying to meet reforms, being very small providers and recruitment of qualified and suitable staff. Obviously everyone’s having trouble with recruitment, but in aged care and health it’s really bad. And particularly in rural remote, we have a lot of trouble doing that recruitment.

Eddie Williams

How many residents do you have at Cypress View Lodge?

Karen Hodgson

So we’ve got 19 residents here and we’re in a very small town, but we feed a much larger area. We don’t have a hospital nearby. We are very unique in that sort of way. We don’t have a hospital next door, so we’re the only aged care health service in our community.

Eddie Williams

If you weren’t there what would happen? Where would people have to go? Would they have to move? What would it look like?

Karen Hodgson

Yeah, so the whole purpose, the community got together and built this facility. So they did it so that families could stay here. So if they can’t stay here in Coleambally, they have to go to the nearest bigger centres which are at least an hour away. But unfortunately a lot of them are facing occupancy issues as well. So we can be talking even further for a lot of the families to go two and three hours away for their elderly people to go into aged care.

Eddie Williams

So what’s the idea behind creating a co-op?

Karen Hodgson

So I had this idea for quite some time, but with the help of a bit of funding from the Department and coming together with the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals program being funded, called Care Together. And my idea of a co-operative is us small providers, we’re sort of out here on our own. We don’t have a head office like the biggest conglomerates do, so this is working with the other providers to keep our individuality, but also then have a type of head office that supports us. So that’s what the co-operative would be doing. We’d be still our individual providers in each of the towns, but we’d have this co-operative working in the background that helps us to meet reforms, meet reporting, helps us with our human resources issues, all that sort of thing, as a type of head office.

Eddie Williams

So it wouldn’t, you know, it wouldn’t make any changes to how the facility runs or what the residents are seeing, but it’s about making that backroom side of things easier. Is that right?

Karen Hodgson

That’s exactly right. Because all of the residents in the nine providers, they want to stay in their communities and they like the small providers because we do a really good job, if I do say so myself. But, yeah, they want to stay where they are, they want to stay in their communities. But the management and the boards are trying so hard to do this on our own and it’s actually impossible to do this on our own for much longer. So this is why we need to get together and have this back office type stuff supporting us.

Eddie Williams

And are the other providers all sort of around Southern New South Wales as well? Are they having similar, I guess, similar challenges to you?

Karen Hodgson

Yeah, to be honest, I think it’s around the whole country, but this idea has come from the ones around me. So we’re talking around a 200 or so kilometre spread. But we know in the country that doesn’t mean much, that sort of distance. So, yeah, we range from up and Boorowa Gundagai, Deni, Cootamundra, Hay, Hillston, all around the area. Yeah we are facing the exact same issues as each other. We all are facing financial distress to meet reforms, but we all provide excellent, not-for-profit, individual care for our residents and want to keep that going.

Eddie Williams

So how is it going? Where are you at in making this co-op happen?

Karen Hodgson

So we’re just about ready to lodge our rules which will get the co-operative formalised. They’re all ready to go and once that’s done, we’re going to focus on three areas particularly to start with. That being human resource support, aged care compliance support and financial compliance support. And once the rules are formed and all ready to go, then we start looking at either recruitment or how we meet those three roles that can support those facilities.

Eddie Williams

How much of a game changer do you see it being, not just for your region but potentially elsewhere in Australia? If other regions kind of can follow this lead?

Karen Hodgson

I think it could be, I’m hoping it’s a massive game changer. I’m hoping it saves us to be honest, and all the other facilities. And I do believe that it can be rolled out across the other areas, whether that be our co-operative providing support to other areas in terms of selling our products, or if models then take off across the country because there’s so many small providers out there that are trying to do this. But at the end of the day what they are doing really well is providing care. It’s the other side of it that we need the help with.

Eddie Williams

Karen, great to talk to you this morning.

Karen Hodgson

Thanks very much. No worries. Thanks for your time.