WEDNESDAY 9 MARCH - Sundale on the Sunshine Coast

The Sunshine Coast beach is famous for it's surf and the opportunity to experience it was too good to miss so I was up at 6 under brooding skies but warm sea and air for a spot of body surfing along with the other early birds of Maroochydore.






Sundale Garden Village at Nambour is one of 6 sites operated by Sundale.


Sundale CEO and IAHSA Chairman Glenn Bunney has visited Somerset Care in the past and it was my pleasure to be able to visit three operating sites and one potential development site with Glenn. The first was Coolum Waters Care Centre, an integrated retirement campus at Coolum Beach, with residential and special care wings and a fairly new development of independent living two and three bed units.





We were welcomed to the site by Manager Trent Kelly, formerly a member of the Sundale ICT team who has recently progressed to this site manager position. A fine example of leadership and management development from a specialist role within the organisation. Somerset Care IT team take note!


En route to the next site Glenn diverted into an area of forest to show me the block at Tewantin on which Sundale plans to develop it's next village campus. An interesting discussion ensued comparing planning bureaucracies in Queensland and Somerset. Many time consuming and frustrating similarities it seems. This apparently virgin site has been used before and in UK terms is technically a brown field site. You wouldn't think so!


Our next visit was to the Eden Rehabilitation Centre at Cooroy. This special 36 bed unit is a healthcare model that I found of particular interest. This diversification by Sundale to develop their rehabilitation service has been a very successful initiative by the Company and one from which many helpful lessons could be drawn by UK care providers as the healthcare market opens up similar opportunities.


Back at Nambour over lunch I was given a presentation by Sundale Chief Information Officer Gavin Tomlins on the initiatives he and his team are pursuing on the Sundale intranet. These included the Sundale Incident Management System (SIMS), their dynamic Continuous Improvement Register and their in house E-learning system. Interesting examples of the in house development of information management systems that are contributing significantly to business efficiency.

Then it was a two hour drive back to South Brisbane in time for dinner out in a local restaurant in Loganholme with the lively and extended West family.


Thus ended my first visit to the Sunshine State of Queensland. Now it's off to New South Wales and the great city of Sydney.

Location:Nambour, Queensland