Carers, clients 'devastated' as major care provider collapses
Carers, clients 'devastated' as major care provider collapses | Breaking News & Latest Australia Updates
Carers, clients 'devastated' as major care provider collapses — By Wade Stephens ABC Mildura-Swan Hill Topic:Carers Voluntary administrators will have to find new care providers for thousands of Annecto customers.(...
By Wade Stephens
ABC Mildura-Swan Hill
Topic:Carers
Voluntary administrators will have to find new care providers for thousands of Annecto customers.(Wade Stephens)
Aged care, disability and veterans care service provider Annecto Incorporated has entered voluntary administration.
An Annecto support worker has told the ABC staff were under financial pressure as their hours dropped off.
Administrator McGrathNicol says all staff will be made redundant and clients will transition to other providers by the end of this month.
Aged care, disability and veterans care service provider Annecto Incorporated has entered voluntary administration, putting entitlement payouts for hundreds of staff in doubt.
Last month Annecto, which hasmore than 1,000 employees and 4,400 clients across four states, announced it would stop its community services by the end of July.
On Monday, the Annecto board put the organisation into voluntary administration, saying the organisation was either insolvent, or was likely to become insolvent in future, according to administrators McGrathNicol.
A Melbourne-based Annecto worker worries they may have to farewell up to two-thirds of their clients.(Supplied)
In a letter to staff, the administrators said all staff would be made redundant, and if there were insufficient funds to pay all wages, entitlements or redundancy packages, they would be paid on a pro rata basis.
If the organisation went into liquidation, McGrathNicol said employees could apply for payouts under the federal government's Fair Entitlements Guarantee Act.
An Annecto carer based in Melbourne, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for future job opportunities, said no precise stop work date had been given to staff, but work hours were dropping off as clients transitioned to new providers.
They said as a result, Annecto support workers were under financial pressure and stressed about their futures.
Annecto was placed into voluntary administration on July 7.(ABC News: Wade Stephens)
Most of Annecto's support workers look after all three categories of customers — aged care, NDIS and veterans affairs.
The Melbourne-based Annecto employee said important relationships between support workers and clients were ending abruptly with workers offered jobs by other providers only able to continue contact with some of their clients.
"The veterans' clients have already [been transitioned to other providers] — they're gone," the worker said.
The carer said they were lamenting the prospect of having to choose which client base to try and follow and which to farewell.
"You build a rapport, you build a routine, you know where you're going every day," they said.
"It's very jarring for people to break that routine and go into a bunch of different houses and have to restart."
Annecto intends to transition its clients to new providers by the end of July.(ABC News: Shannon Schubert)
Peter Smith is a Melbourne-based Annecto client who has a team of more than five support workers from the company.
He said he had specific needs due to a long-term brain injury and post-polio syndrome and fears he will lose contact with support workers who understand his needs when he changes to a new provider.
"I feel devastated," Mr Smith said.
"I have multiple disabilities and my support team … I've trained them up to be aware of my needs.
Annecto NDIS client Peter Smith is worried it will be hard to retain all his support workers following the transition process.(Supplied: Peter Smith)
In an interview before the voluntary administration announcement, Annecto Incorporated interim chief executive Tyrone McCuskey said it was up to the service providers taking on Annecto clients to keep those clients connected to their former support workers.
"The opportunities for staff to move with any of the clients they look after is really up to the new provider to assist with that transition," Mr McCuskey said.
"The clients all have choice and control and they have a choice in provider and choice in the individuals who support them."
Annecto acting chief executive Tyrone McCuskey.(ABC News)
He said Peter, for example, could speak to his new provider about continuity of care and keeping specific people in his support network.
"That's definitely possible, because there's so much choice and control that the clients have," he said.
"There's a lot of flexibility about how they can require their services to be met going forward in this day and age."
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