Featured image: Jude Emmer CEO of Wesley Mission Queensland (seated front right) with staff at an event
IT was a daring experiment when Wesley Mission Queensland opened Queensland’s first aged care community in 1936. Yet for an organisation that can trace its roots to 1847, it was just another case of stepping into the breach.
The Garden Settlement at Chermside, now known as Wheller Gardens, not only survived but thrived and is now home to one of the largest retirement villages in Queensland, Wheller on the Park, as well as several residential aged care communities and Queensland’s only children’s hospice Hummingbird House.
It was named after Rev. Harold M. Wheller of the Central Methodist Mission, who wanted to create a safe, caring place for those who couldn’t survive on the new “old-age pension scheme” (introduced in 1935) and whose families did not have the capacity to care for them. In collaboration with Mr George Marchant local soft drink businessman and philanthropist, Wheller Gardens was born.
“It was a vision from the beginning that we would look after the elderly and ensure that they had somewhere safe as they grew old, and that’s how the first residential aged care service began in the years after the Great Depression of the 1930s,”
Wesley Mission Queensland CEO Jude Emmer
The organisation’s roots though date back to 1847, when the state’s first Methodist Minister Rev William Moore, conducted a funeral service for a prostitute who had died penniless and unmourned.
It was the Reverend’s first duty. This act of compassion was the acorn from which the mighty oak of Wesley Mission Queensland grew.
In 1907, Rev George Rowe of the Albert Street Methodist Church established Sisters of the People to help the elderly, homeless children, and the poor. This Central Methodist Mission became Wesley Mission Brisbane and then in 2016 renamed Wesley Mission Queensland to better reflect its expanding outreach.
“How we look now as an innovative and responsive not-for-profit community service provider is how we established ourselves in 1907,” Jude says. “We have become more structured in our response to caring for people in need and extend beyond emergency relief on the streets of Brisbane to the full spectrum of support services in broader Queensland, but that’s where it all began.”
Responding to changing needs in the community has always been a key motivation –during the Great Depression the mission provided meals, shelter and emergency relief to the jobless.
Childcare, disability, housing and other social services have been added to the list of services through the years. Mental health services have grown significantly during the past six years, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Building on that first Garden Settlement aged care service almost a century ago, it now has 13 residential aged care communities around Brisbane.
“The ageing agenda is a significant focus for us,” Jude says. “We fully supported the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety because the sector has been in disarray and underfunded for far too long. Any reform is welcomed.”
Wesley Mission Queensland now has about 1000 residents in residential aged care, at least another 1000 in retirement living and from 750-1000 recipients of community aged care packages, an area that is growing quickly.
“But it always comes back to funding, and that’s the reality,” Jude says. “Residential Aged Care is still funded less a day to look after residents than even an average quality hotel would charge, but we are very proud of what we achieve with the budgets we have.”
Many proposed reforms are yet to be realised, but Jude sees workforce as the biggest challenge.
“We have to ensure we can attract the right people to the organisation and make sure they are appropriately trained and skilled to deliver quality care and support,” Jude says. “There is a major need for training and mentorship, and as a provider we are doing work to ensure this happens.”
Jude has a nursing background in senior management over many years within hospital settings and was working within the aged care sector when she stepped in as CEO of Wesley Mission Queensland in late 2020 – and into a world of COVID-19 and two Royal Commissions.
Pictured: Jude Emmer, CEO of Wesley Mission Queensland
Jude loves the challenge and diversity of the role and has a strong understanding of what needs to happen to provide a world-class service.
“My nursing background has been really useful navigating everything, particularly our response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Jude says. “I don’t know how a non-clinical person would manage, and I’m grateful for having a team that supports me.”
When possible, Jude likes to head out to explore the broad and complex array of services that Wesley Mission Queensland offers.
“It is wonderful and inspiring to see what we do out there, and the people we employ are so passionate about what they do and how they do it,” she says. “Many have been with us for a very long time. It’s so rewarding to meet the people who do the most amazing things for the people we serve.”
Now based at 90 sites in south-east Queensland, Wesley Mission Queensland has 3,500 employees, including 500 in its national Auslan interpreters’ program, working across aged care, disability, mental health, housing and homelessness and emergency relief.
“As Wesley Mission Queensland live out our vision of ‘a compassionate, just and inclusive society for all, the customer is at the heart of all we do”, Jude says.