THE Shire of Gingin has selected six community members to join its aged housing and care service provision working group.
The six community representatives are Sylvia Kelly, Irene Neville, Karen Grant, Wendy Harris, Laura Parker and Robert Wade.
When the council called for nominations it said three community members would be selected to join the working group.
Before the council went behind closed doors to discuss the nominations on Tuesday, July 19 councillor Linda Balcombe declared an impartiality interest in the item as two of the applicants are on the board of directors for her employer, Gingin Districts Community Financial Services.
When the meeting opened again President Wayne Fewster said the recommendation to elect three community representatives had been changed to elect all six.
Cr Fewster said the reason for the change was because they had all had shown an interest in joining the working group.
At the June 21 meeting Cr Balcombe as well as councillors Frank Johnson and Andrea Vis were appointed as councillor representatives to the working group, which will also include the chief executive officer Aaron Cook and corporate and community services executive manager Les Crichton.
The June 21 officer’s report said it was anticipated there would be two primary aims of the working group:
- To assess the current situation relating to aged housing and care services across the shire, review all existing relevant information and reports, obtain additional information and guidance from experts in the field as required.
- To identify opportunities for action to be taken by the shire (including by way of support, advocacy, promotion and education) with respect to improving aged housing and care service provision within the Shire of Gingin.
According to the officer’s report there is a lot of community deliberation over the provision of aged housing and aged services within the shire.
“There is much miscommunication within the community regarding this matter and this working group is to progress liaison within the sector to improve the provisions of aged housing and further to this, in-home aged services,’’ the officer’s report said.
