Care centre delayed at Waimea Plains

Plans for an aged-care facility at Arvida Waimea Plains in Richmond have been delayed due to changing market conditions, including construction costs.

The proposed care centre at the retirement village was going to get underway this year, but Arvida regional manager Jason Edkins says there will now be plan changes and a “clearer indication on timelines in the coming months”.

Originally, the care centre plan included 59 rooms split over three levels and he says there will now likely be less rooms. While beds for residents living with dementia are still in the plans, he says timing remains uncertain.

“We certainly still have the intention of building care and the likely outcome will be a single level care centre with a lower number of rooms at this stage.

“We understand the frustration felt by residents and we’re naturally disappointed in having to delay,” he says. “We’re disappointed that, like many in the sector, we’ve experienced delays due to the changing market conditions and that has included construction costs.”

Residents Trevor and Ann Tuffnell moved into the new village four years ago with the belief an aged-care facility would be built in time for them when they needed it.

The couple have lived their married life in Richmond and both are turning 85 this year. With Ann’s health slipping, they no longer know where they will go if Trevor can no longer look after her and she needs to go into a care facility.

He admits the document they signed when they moved into Arvida Waimea Plains did not state when the care facility would be built, but it had been “intimated” those facilities would be built and would be available for them.

“I felt Arvida glossed around that a wee bit. But we were five years younger and it didn’t seem as important. But now that Ann’s health is not so smart, it is of more interest to us.”

At a recent meeting, Trevor says residents were told that the care facility design was going back to the drawing board and they were “being led to the assumption” that it would be five years before it might be built.

“Now there is a question hanging over you – what the hell is going to happen tomorrow?  If something happened to me, we’d have to pack Ann up and find somewhere in Christchurch in a care centre where we have family near.

“We hadn’t planned it to be this way. We had envisaged that those further services would become available.”

Up the road at Arvida Oakwoods’ retirement village, residents committee secretary Alec Waugh says the Oakwoods’ care centre is in need of refurbishment and residents also rely on the proposed facility at Waimea Plains to provide enough beds in the future.

He says residents were told in 2021 that the Oakwoods care centre, which provides rest home and hospital-level care, was in such a state that it would not be continued. Then, in 2023, they were told it would be refurbished rather than demolished. But he says residents do not know when that will happen. Last year, Oakwoods’ proposed dementia unit was put on hold indefinitely.

His worry now is that the Waimea Plains care facilities will have less beds than originally planned and will have higher costs for those who need them.

Jason acknowledged the timing of the refurbishment of the Oakwoods care centre also remains uncertain.

Retirement Villages Association of New Zealand’s executive director, John Collins, says the aged-care scene is changing in New Zealand because it is so expensive to build standard rooms for people who get insufficient Government funding.

He says it can cost about a quarter-of-a-million dollars to build a standard care room and, in future, care rooms will generally tend to have a premium charge or an occupation right agreement. In short, care rooms will be for those who can afford it, he says.

Around the country, he says the number of standard rooms in aged-care facilities is not increasing, whereas the number of rooms under occupation-right agreements or a premium charge are increasing.

John says the emphasis is moving to home-based support to take the pressure off aged-care facilities. “But still, there is going to be a need for genuine residential care for people with high needs.”

And we have to keep building dementia units as well.”

Jason says Arvida supports any change to overall aged-care funding that will help providers deliver more care and support to older people.