Australians win homecare contract

Three local organisations and an Australian company have won contracts to provide homecare services for the Auckland District Health Board.

The winners were LifeWise, Health Care NZ, Presbyterian Support Northern and Melbourne-based Royal District Nursing Service.

The board named Royal District Nursing Service as one of four contractors after it moved to upgrade its homecare services to Auckland's elderly.

Auckland Home Healthcare lost out to Royal District Nursing Service, which began providing home care on July 1. The newcomer hopes, ultimately, to provide a service for about 1000 clients.

Royal District Nursing Service, a not-for-profit organisation, has been operating for the past 120 years. It is Australia's largest provider of home nursing and healthcare services. It provided services to over 32,500 clients in Melbourne last year.

But Auckland Home Healthcare nurse and team leader Maureen Langley said Royal District Nursing Service had been "a little bit questionable" in its approach to staffing its Auckland operation.

"I am finding every day I am getting staff saying they have been approached by the other service."

Ms Langley said she had been told by Royal District Nursing Service that it was not "actively" trying to recruit her staff, but she had "no reason to disbelieve what my staff are telling me".

Many of her workers felt divided loyalties, with the arrival of the new provider, she said.

While they had worked for Auckland Home Healthcare for some time, they also felt obliged to move with their clients to a new caregiver.

Auckland Home Healthcare, a subsidiary of Howick Baptist Healthcare, has care contracts with ACC, Waitemata DHB and the Health Ministry.

It also looks after some private clients.

Howick Baptist Homecare chief executive Val Sugrue said she had heard of "very distressed" staff who had been approached to work for Royal District Nursing Service.

She said Royal District Nursing Service had moved to New Zealand with no infrastructure here, and assumed it could just recruit its staff from the organisations that missed out on the contract.

But Royal District Nursing Service spokeswoman Sue Wood yesterday said the organisation had sufficient staff levels of around 80.

It had three months to get fully up to speed with its homecare service, and staff advertising would be done as its client base grew and more workers were needed.