Selected hospital and prison chaplaincies head a long list of ministry services to go in a major shake-up of Anglicare’s services announced today.
Posted on 08/03/2005 7:48:47 AM PDT by sionnsar
Selected hospital and prison chaplaincies head a long list of ministry services to go in a major shake-up of Anglicare’s services announced today.
The future of Anglicare’s eight nursing homes in Sydney, Wollongong and Nowra also remains in the balance with Anglicare Council announcing a review of their financial viability.
About half of Anglicare’s 1,200 staff work in the aged care area.
The announcement follows an article in this month’s Southern Cross which reported that Anglicare has been sustaining operational deficits for years, including a $3 million deficit this year alone.
Anglicare’s services to parishes - including cross-cultural ministry training, its strategic planning services, its demographic research services and the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) - will bear the brunt of the restructure to come into effect at the end of 2006.
“Anglicare is committed to continuing financial support for these services through until 2006,” Anglicare Chief Operating Officer Peter Gardiner has told sydneyanglicans.net.
“With the [Sydney] Diocese declining to provide additional funding we will endeavour to find another location for them.”
About one per cent of Anglicare’s funding comes from Sydney Diocese and Anglican parishes.
Mr Gardiner explains the Anglicare Council will seek to ‘rehouse’ these ministry services with other organisations.
However he admitted that no such negotiations had yet been initiated.
Anglicare’s two other main services for churches – support of parish-based ESL classes and emergency services management and training – will be merged into ‘the broad mix of welfare services that Anglicare provides’, Mr Gardiner says.
Half a million dollars will also be slashed from hospital and prison chaplaincy.
Mr Gardiner announced today that this would result in ‘a small number of positions to go and slight changes to property’.
However it is the possible changes to aged care that will impact the most number of Anglicare staff.
“Council affirmed that aged care is a core business,” Anglicare Chief Operating Officer Peter Gardiner told sydneyanglicans.net, “But requested that financial modelling be undertaken to see if it is desirable for Anglicare to remain in residential aged care.”
Peter Gardiner says Anglicare’s six community aged care services were not part of this review, but added that a decision to sell the nursing homes would see further cuts across Anglicare.
“The impact on the broader organisation is going to be dependent on the decision around residential aged care. [Selling off the homes] will result in a substantial downsizing of the entire organisation.”
Mr Gardiner expects Anglicare Council to make a decision on the nursing homes by early October.
A formal statement from Anglicare’s CEO Peter Kell, explaining the changes, was posted to Anglican parishes today.
Mr Kell says, “These decisions, and indeed the entire review process, are the result of careful consideration of what Anglicare does and why it does it, in the context of an ever- expanding community need for our services and increased demands on our resources.”
In his statement Mr Kell adds, that it is “deeply regrettable that some review decisions would negatively impact some members of the Anglican community, and staff in particular. However, Council’s preparedness to make such difficult decisions underpins a commitment to a strong, vibrant and financially viable Anglicare over the longer term.”
Earlier this week Archbishop Peter Jensen, chairman of Anglicare, responded to the Southern Cross article about the funding crisis, emphasising his commitment to Anglicare and ensuring it is ‘strengthened in the life of this Diocese’.
“There are some people who have assumed that our commitment to the Diocesan Mission means that we give no priority to acts of compassion and mercy in our witness and discipleship, both for individuals and for our corporate entity,” the Archbishop says.
“Nothing could be further from the truth - biblical teaching will not allow us to hold such a superficial view of Christian witness.”
Click here to read the full-text of the Archbishop’s comments.
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