The Lilliane Brady Village (LBV) has welcomed the arrival of experienced aged care consultant, Sherrie Boucher, to temporarily fill the role of Director of Nursing (DON).
Ms Boucher is a Registered Nurse with over 20 years Aged Care Industry Management Level experience, and who specializes in education and mentoring.
She has spent most of her working life in country Victoria, in the Gippsland area, working in rural and remote hospital settings, as well as public aged care facilities and private not-for-profit homes.
“All over Victoria and just in the past 12 months I’ve been consulting predominantly around Sydney,” Ms Boucher told The Cobar Weekly.
“I love the country. I’m very passionate about aged care and I’m really excited to bring my knowledge and skills to the community and to be of help,” she said.
Her goal is to see the Lilliane Brady Village, “thriving again” with the facility having a full staff on board.
“You really need a team to run a nursing home, you can’t do it all by yourself.
“Obviously care comes first and the care here is excellent and the home is outstanding,” she said.
“The thing that I’ll be focusing on is governance and re-compliance—they’re the two biggest areas that we need to drill down on quite quickly.”
Ms Boucher has been employed on a medium term contract at the nursing home/retirement village which is owned and operated by Cobar Shire Council.
Council’s Director of Finance and Community Services Kym Miller said Ms Boucher will fill the vacant role until such time they are able to recruit a permanent DON.
Mr Miller said they have been struggling with staffing at the LBV with another important role of Clinical Care Manager, also currently vacant.
He hopes Ms Boucher, with her connections in the aged care industry, will be able to help Council to recruit more staff to their vacant management, nursing, administration, carers, cooks and kitchen hand roles.
“That way we’ll be able to use our extra 10 beds that we haven’t been able to use due to a lack of staff,” Mr Miller said.
Ms Boucher said she’s heard great things about the facility and is keen to get it “back to what it used to be”.
“I’m really excited to try and bring life back into the home and I think from what I seen in my first week here that everybody is really hungry for guidance.”
She said part of the plan to bring the village back to what it once was, is welcoming volunteers back into the facility.
“We welcome any volunteers coming into the home.
“They are free to pop by and say G’day for a cuppa.
“Whether they’d like to come in and run an activity, do some painting, craft, read to the residents, musicians, Men’s Shed stuff, school visits, anything, anyone with some spare time—they will all be made welcome
