2024 in review: New year, new identity

This year marks an inflection point in the life of the pride. Or as the saying goes, we’ve recognised that “what got us here won’t get us to where we are going”.

Thanks to our clients and connections in the industry, we’ve had an amazing journey over the past seven years. We’ve helped many providers struggling with the constant change in the sector to adapt. We’ve helped providers sharpen their focus. We’ve contributed to the ongoing conversation of how to ensure providers can sustainably meet the needs of their customers. Along this journey, we’ve become a trusted partner to providers looking to develop consumer-focused business models, including additional services and accommodation optimisation, and we’ve helped raise the bar on clinical governance.

In 2016, I penned a piece for my school reunion relating how I spend more time looking to the future than the past, and this is equally true today. While it is easy and comfortable to reflect on what we’ve achieved, we all live in the present and the arrow of time points only in one direction. 

So, let me share with you our focus for the future.

A new image

Thanks to Angie, our marketing lead, we’ve had a critical look at ourselves and realised that our image is somewhat dated. Over the past 12 months, we looked at who we are and realised that it’s not easy to connect us with the aged care sector. So, we’ve changed our name to Pride Aged Living. We’ve retained the collective model of how we work (Pride) while linking it more directly to the sector (Aged). You can see this in our new branding, the structure of our website and in our ongoing communications.

A new service focus

When we started, we primarily responded to the needs of our clients. Over this period, we’ve developed a suite of key services that have broad applicability to the sector. This suite of services is specifically designed to help our clients as they seek to become more consumer-focused and adapt to a funding regime that requires greater consumer contribution. This means we are increasingly focusing on proven models that support the sustainability and viability of players in the aged care and retirement living sectors. As one client said, “we helped them to be more commercial”

An integrated approach

We can still claim to be the first and only integrated consultancy that can help our clients:

• Grow their business,
• Improve financial sustainability and
• Manage and reduce operational risk 

Issues don’t emerge in isolation, and this is why our service lines cover:

• Operational Performance
• Clinical and Quality Performance
• Capital Projects and Strategy
• Corporate Governance

We can only do this because our directors and owners, James, Katrina, and I, each have extensive experience and skills in these areas.

Data is king

During 2024, we upgraded our core systems, to allow us to develop the most comprehensive understanding of the players in the sector of any organisation in Australia. By accessing multiple public data sources and supplementing this with our own unique insights, we are developing the most comprehensive data set on organisations in the sector. This will include both qualitative and quantitative metrics. This data will be available to our clients to assist them in making the right decisions. For example,  the Government no longer tells you where the demand is via the ACAR, our data insights on demographics, quality of existing supply and demand will be highly valued by providers looking to grow or adapt their offerings. 

Continuing to lead

We’ve all heard about the evolution and convergence of residential care, home care and retirement living, and we’ve responded to this in the following ways: 

Our work in additional services implementation continues to lead the sector, and thanks to Megan and James, our ongoing support service ensures providers continue to meet or exceed their customers' expectations while meeting compliance expectations.

George has worked tirelessly to develop our innovative response to help providers optimise the outcome of their accommodation services.

Together, these services underpin the financial sustainability of our clients who operate residential services.

Jason has added unparalleled depth to our support for providers of home care services. 

Katrina and JC continue to focus on clinical governance, supporting providers in strengthening their assurance models more sustainably by making assurance activities recurring rather than reactive. They are also assisting providers in transitioning to the Strengthened Quality Standards.

In retirement living, our demographic analysis capability and variable DMF model directly address the excessive capital many of our clients hold. 

When you reflect on this suite of capabilities, you really get a sense of the uniqueness of the capability in our senior leadership team.

Continuing to invest in our people

Subsidising continued education remains a cornerstone of our strategy, continuing our commitment to investing in our people. This aligns with ensuring that our staff continue to be experts in their fields and reinforces our position as industry leaders.

This year, we celebrate notable academic achievements by our staff:

Strengthening our team

To ensure we have enough resources to continue delivering timely high-quality service to the sector, we welcomed five new cubs during the year:

Priorities in 2024-25 

In June, we held our annual staff retreat. This is an important time for us to reflect internally on how we performed, acknowledge where we need to improve and set our direction for the year ahead. 

Our priorities in the next 12 months include:

Missing JC, who was presenting at the ACCPA NSW/ACT Conference!

Thankfully, there are some constants

In this annual review, I’ve focused on the future. However, we need to acknowledge there are some core elements of Pride Aged Living that remain constant:

Final word

Seven years ago, I said I’d rather be small than have the wrong members in the pride. Today, I can say we have the most amazing pride. Everyone supports everyone, we celebrate individual and collective success, and most of all, we know we make a positive difference to our clients. In my words, we do good things for people who do good things for their clients and through this… 

We take pride in your success.