by Glenview CEO Damien Jacobs
Every so often, it is worth stopping to look at where we have come from. I’ve been reading through the Glenview history book Growing Gracefully & Usefully: Glenview 1948-2010 by Caroline Evans. It is a reminder that Glenview has been part of Tasmanian life for more than 75 years — and that the past three to four years have been among the most challenging in all of it.
A lot changed, very quickly. Glenview’s growth over the past five years has been extraordinary. Opening our specialist dementia village at Korongee almost doubled our size overnight and increased the complexity of our model of care many times over. Growth like that brings real benefits, but it also brings risk, and both take time to work through. Add a global pandemic, and you have a combination of pressures no planning could have foreseen.
What we have learnt? Where are we without a workforce? Workforce first — get that right, and we can properly focus on our community, clients, residents and families. Any organisation can falter, and culture is the most fragile thing we hold: it can be lost anywhere in a heartbeat and then take years to rebuild. That is not a reflection on any one person or team — it is what happens to any workplace under sustained pressure. Rebuilding is deliberate, patient work: defining who we are and how we work together, setting guardrails everyone understands and checking they hold, investing in development and face-to-face training, and building the systems behind it.
Where we are now? As I shared with you earlier this month, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has finalised its compliance matter with no further action, standing Glenview down from enhanced regulatory oversight across both Windsor and Korongee. That outcome belongs to every team and every role. For the first time in over two years, we are also shifting onto a sustainable footing. June was the first month in two years that Glenview has recorded a surplus. This is not about making a profit. It is about having something to reinvest in — refurbishing resident areas, replacing furniture, and improving our training resources. Put simply, we can refocus our energy on what we do best: caring for our Glenview community.
I’ll leave you with a quote from the Governor, Sir Ronald Cross, on the opening of the Helen Hudspeth wing in November 1952: His Excellency said: “Glenview, with its glamorous surroundings, was yet in its infancy, and must grow gracefully and usefully, not as an institution, but a place where aged people who had been pioneers in this State might live quietly, peacefully and with a sense of dignity. Glenview must grow well in stages, and in the course of time would meet the needs of many.”
Seventy-five + years on, that is still the job.