Lipmann stepping down as Wintringham CEO
Founder and chief executive officer Bryan Lipmann will retire after 35 years of leading the Victoria-based housing and aged care organisation created to address elderly homelessness.
After leading the values-driven welfare company Wintringham for over 30 years, chief executive officer Bryan Lipmann will step down once his replacement has been appointed – but he told Australian Ageing Agenda he will remain on hand in an advisory role as needed.
The now 77-year-old Mr Lipmann founded Wintringham following a realisation in his late 30s of how many people had been locked out of aged care in Australia.
After a decade of working as a shearer and in a slaughterhouse, Mr Lipmann started working as a social worker at Gordon House in Melbourne – one of Victoria’s notorious night shelters.
While he loved the wildness of the place he said he was struck by the trauma experienced by the residents, and the realisation of how easy it was for his parents to access aged care compared to older people facing homelessness.
“When my parents got frail and sick I had to access aged care for them… and I was really surprised how good it was and I’d go back to Gordon House where all of these old men and some old women were living in the most appalling conditions,” he said.
“I couldn’t work out why they couldn’t be part of the aged care system.
“So then I went round and tried to get them admitted into aged care – which in those days was primarily church-based aged care or faith-based whatever they want to call it – and I never made one successful placement. Not one.
“So I thought well I’ll build my own. So that’s what I did.”
Mr Lipmann told AAA the biggest barrier to aged care at the time was it being designed for “mainstream aged people,” giving the example of his late mother who was Anglo-Saxon, middle class, and had a family, and expressed happiness that while it may not be easy, it is at least possible now for everyone to access aged care.
“When I started Winteringham, I was told that there is a perfectly good homeless service system and you don’t need to go into aged care. Well the reality was that aged homeless services is very poorly funded and I wanted to get into aged care and I couldn’t see any reason why people should be discriminated on the basis of poverty.
“So I argued that they’re not homeless and elderly, they’re elderly and homeless and that changes the whole paradigm because once you say that they’re elderly and homeless you could say they’re elderly and a war veteran or elderly and Greek or elderly and one-legged, they’re elderly,” he said.
“But the whole system is still geared towards the needs of my late mum. It’s not geared towards the highly complex needs of, for example, a homeless person who might take three four or five months of negotiating before they’ll be prepared to accept care.”
While concerned about the growing red-tape seeing more staff behind desks instead of providing quality care and the rising costs with providing aged care, Mr Lipmann said he has never found another country where a service like Wintringham could survive, and recognised the long way Australia had come in the aged care sector.
On the international stage Wintringham was awarded the United Nations Scroll of Honour in 2011, while locally, Mr Lipmann was named Melburnian of the Year in 2015. He was also appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 1999 for service to the community, particularly in the provision of accommodation for older homeless people
It has been a great privilege to work with and for such inspiring people over the last three decades, Mr Lipmann said.
“I’m not a religious person, my beliefs are in social justice and staff have got to keep fighting for the rights of their clients and clients have got to be empowered to believe they have got rights and fight for those,” he told AAA.
“It’s illegal in Australia to be discriminated on the basis of religion or sex or ethnicity, well you shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate on the basis of poverty.”
Mr Lipmann also shared with AAA that 83 Wintringham staff would be celebrating 20 years of employment with the organisation this year.
“And we’re only 35 years old,” he said. “The first five years we had no services, virtually the first two years I was the only employee, so for people to stay that long… it’s a wonderful culture and so I will work on that and continue working on that to make sure it survives.”
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