Anglican Retirement Villages, Diocese of Sydney

Anglican Retirement Villages, Diocese of Sydney (ARV) is a not-for-profit public benevolent institution formed in 1959. This inception date places ARV as one of the founding entities of the social service now referred to as retirement or seniors living. Today, ARV has retained its distinctive Christian and social credentials, and serves some 6000 people across community care, independent living and assisted living services. With over 2000 staff and 30 sites across the greater Sydney region, ARV is one of the largest aged care providers in Australia.

History
Archbishop Howard Mowll and his wife Dorothy Mowll were instrumental in the cause to provide housing and food for missionaries returning from the overseas mission field who had neither family nor finance to support them in their retirement. From initially providing self-care accommodation, ARV grew quickly as Federal and State Government's poured massive capital subsidies into retirement and aged care housing, with up to a 200% co-payment being provided by Government on some projects.

Structure
The organisation is owned and operated by the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, with which ARV retains strong ties, including a common mission and a central focus on evangelism. The Board of Anglican Retirement Villages is appointed by the Archbishop of Sydney and the Synod, and comprises of 9-10 people. The current Chair of ARV is Allan Fife, Managing Director of Fife Capital. The Board in turn appoints a CEO to run the organisation. The current CEO is Ken Barber who has served in the role for some eight years.

Current profile
ARV's Mission is "Creating Communities of Christian Care". The Organisation has four main objectives - Care, Christian Witness, Growth & Renewal and People. Ken Barber has over the past eight years turned the organisation's financial situation around and developed a strong growth program with significant growth in all areas of operations. This growth is expected to continue for at least the next 20 years, as Australia's ageing population increases significantly in number.

Care services are provided across Sydney in:
- Community care: including Federal and State funded community programs, ARV funded programs and user pays funded programs. Growth in this area since 2000 has been significant.
- Independent Living: provision of a number of managed, secure communities for seniors to age in place in, within a supported environment to ensure that wherever possible, further moves to more intensive accommodation is avoided. Likewise, growth in this area in the last eight years has been high.
- Residential care: comprising both low (hostel) and high (nursing home) care this focuses on a number of key care needs including dementia, palliative care, rehabilitation and psycho-geriatric care.

Underpinning all care services ARV has also developed close working relationships with local Anglican parishes to ensure appropriate chaplaincy and Christian ministry services are visble and accessible throughout the organisation.

Whilst care for all Australians is the core philsophy for ARV, the funds to drive this care are generated from development activities. The current development pipeline execeeds A$1 billion including sites at:
- Bulli
- Castle Hill
- Glenhaven
- Kiama
- Kingswood
- Taren Point
- Victoria Park

Not-for-profit commentary
Being not-for-profit is a great advantage to any organisation's residents and clients as there is no requirement for a shareholder return and it is also exempt from many of the usual taxes. CEO Ken Barber has stated that if an organisation can be as efficient as any for profit organisation then more funds can be channeled to resident and client care. The net result is a better outcome for care and enhances the Governments support of aged care costs.

Usually a not-for-profit's main objective in aged care is the attainment of high levels of care and satisfaction for residents and clients and in ARV's case developing an environment where strong Christian values are practised. Unlike many of the for-profit aged care operators, particularily some of the recent entrants, profit is not the main or only objective.