Just sayin’...

By Donna Kelly

OK. THIS is my last instalment on aged care provider Benetas. Well, for a bit.

You may remember we started doing articles about three editions ago when we were contacted by a woman who said the price had gone up - and the service had gone down. The service had moved from Hepburn Shire Council to Benetas.

So we ran that story and then quite a few other people got in touch and said they were also having issues. Some had not had anyone cleaning their homes for six weeks - and some were still being charged for the service anyway.

And so we ran another story with those people and Benetas kept doing the public relations thing saying they were doing their best and were very surprised to hear that some of their clients were not happy.

Then I wondered who I could reach out to. People were reaching out to me and I was reporting on that, but that wasn't really helping anyone, except they felt perhaps they were being heard.

The last story I ran was with comment from Ballarat MP Catherine King who said the Health Department were onto it - that's pretty impressive - and she also provided lots of numbers where complaints could be lodged or other providers could be found. Great, I thought, at last some movement at the station.

The edition came out on July 17 and on July 18, Peter, not his real name, called. He said he had just read the story, he was one of the earlier callers, and just wanted to let me know...drum roll please...no, no good news. He just wanted to let me know he had been waiting all day for his cleaner and no-one had come.

The wait started at 9am and it was 4pm when he called me. Peter didn't want to leave the house in case the cleaner turned up but "I did have other things I wanted to get on with", he said.

Peter has decided to quit the service. He had been ill, very ill, but said he was on the mend and could do better himself. I mean, he is still not great, but after beating cancer he is tired of spending days inside, waiting. Perhaps his cleaner is called Godot?

Anyway, always looking on the bright side, I am blood type B positive after all, I decided that things must be looking up. The only call I had was from Peter so maybe all the other people were fine now?

I decided to write to that first woman, the one who said the prices had gone up and the service had gone down. So I found her emails and sent one saying she had done a good thing, and that as a result of all those numbers from Catherine King MP - and the Health Department being onto it and all that, that all must be mostly good in the aged care sector in Hepburn Shire.

She wrote back: "That is excellent news – as an aside I did all the things Catherine King said (prior to her saying them) and rang My Aged Care who gave me new service numbers and the names of other providers to see if I could get a new provider. None of them got back to me (and they were out of district) so I assume either they don’t have the capacity or are unable to come as this is Benetas’s territory."

Hmmm. I have nothing to add. Unless you have read Kyle's column opposite. The poor thing thinks I shop just twice a year. One day he will find a thing called online shopping and I will be done for. Or he will pick up on the surprised tone I manage when he says "is that new?" and I say "this old thing, I've had it for years".

And life rolls on. Just sayin'...

Ageing DisGracefully members, including Max Primmer, get together at the Daylesford Mill Markets cafe on Thursdays at 11am. All welcome. For information email ageingdis3461@gmail. com, call 0427 131 249 or head to the Ageing DisGracefully Facebook page.

Ageing DisGracefully is an initiative of Hepburn House.

Here is the crossword solution for Edition 284. How did you go?

All words in the crossword appear somewhere in the same edition of The Local.