And welcome 2023!
I really hope and pray you’re enjoying an active and safe holiday period and looking forward to the year ahead!
On behalf of our entire Care Forward team, I want to say thank you to all of our staff, clients, and stakeholders far and wide, for what was an incredible year in 2022.
As I look back, I’m amazed at the hard work and dedication of our people, the commitment of our clients, and just so grateful for all that you do to make our community a better place.
2022 saw us grow again significantly in staff and client numbers.
It was a historic year in which we became a registered charity.
We opened our fourth office in Burnie.
We were the largest provider of Home Care Packages in Tasmania for the second year in a row.
And we were recognised as a finalist in the Tasmanian 2022 Palliative Care Awards.
Mentioning these highlights doesn’t even scratch the surface though of the underlying achievements that underpins everything we do.
The real reason to celebrate is the difference we’ve made in the lives of the hundreds of staff and clients across Tasmania.
Seeing that impact can only really be understood by listening to the stories of the thousands of people we work with across our beautiful community.
And as we look forward to continuing to serve you in 2023 and beyond, can I also say how excited I am to now be moving forward as a not-for-profit organisation.
What is not changing however is our mission of more people living well at home.
We want to see senior Tasmanians achieving the highest level of independence in this country.
And we know and believe that can happen as we continue our focus on improving consumer engagement, workforce enhancement, corporate management, technology, system, and process development, besides much else.
We want to see clients actively engaged across all levels of our organisation.
We want to be the provider that consumers recommend to their friends and wider community.
We want to be a recognised leader in celebrating diversity -- by providing an inclusive safe environment for all our staff and clients.
And we also want recruit and retain a quality workforce of highly skilled staff who work together efficiently and effectively.
That means we want to improve training to better support our staff in roles.
We also want to support career progression opportunities wile strengthening business continuity and risk management.
At the same time, we want to maximise opportunities and efficiencies gained from now being a charitable organisation.
We want to increase our client base as well as scope options for future diversification to ensure sustainability.
To do this we need to become a high performing, financially efficient and sustainable aged care provider.
We need to increase our capacity for informed decision-making and individual accountability.
We need our risk, quality, and compliance management to be embedded in all our systems and processes.
At the same time, we need to select and implement modern technology architecture to provide a unified view of all our consumer, staff, and operational data.
We also need to develop an integrated suite of management systems to enhance consumer and staff experience from initiation to exit.
And we need to develop mature business processes which are streamlined and uniformly applied across our organisation to improve staff and client experience.
All of this is necessary if together we want to see senior Tasmanians achieving the highest level of independence in the country.
All of it is not only possible, but it is also achievable together and we are committed to it, in order to see more and more people living well at home across Tasmania.
Please partner with us again in 2023 as we re-commit to another year of working with you, for your health and care, not just our own.
Its at this point that I usually start to get a little bit philosophical.
I’ll never forget the mantra that my late Pop, David Aldridge, made his own.
It came from the famous sentence in Cicero's most influential philosophical work, in his treatise “On Duties”.
I won’t attempt to say it in Latin but in English it goes, “"Not for us alone are we born; our country, our friends, have a share in us"…
And that statement became the Latin motto: “Not for ourselves alone”.
My Pop would often quote it in family gatherings.
It means that in addition to our own interests – which we all have, as individuals and as an organisation – we also contribute, inevitably, to our wider community; and the point is, we should want this to be a positive, not a neutral much less a negative impact.
We want our contribution to be for the greater good of our community, in addition to (but not separate from) our own interests.
And my Pop would always remind us, at every Christmas and at every New Year get together, at every BBQ and in every newsletter.
“Not for ourselves alone” are we doing all this. Not for ourselves alone do we want to grow and succeed and achieve and prosper.
Yes that would be wonderful for us. But ultimately, its what is in your best interests too.
That’s why we do it, the way we do it.
And we must never forget that.
So, thank you, once again.
My heartfelt appreciation to one and all for your commitment to us, just as we re-commit to another year of dedication to you.
I can’t wait to care forward in 2023, with you, for you.
Let’s make the most of it.
Cheers.