Bolton Clarke celebrates 140 years of nursing
It has been 140 years since Bolton Clarke’s singular nurse began providing home nursing across Melbourne. Now it is one of the largest independent providers in Australia.
Yesterday, 17 February, marked the day the first members of the Melbourne District Nursing Society – later known as Royal District Nursing Service, now Bolton Clarke – met and established home nursing in Australia.
Now one of Australia’s largest independent not-for-profit providers, Bolton Clarke has expanded from its original team of one singular nurse, Nurse Ferguson, to more than 16,000 employees supporting 130,000 people.
Around the same time the organisation was expanding its small community of nurses travelling to patients on foot and then bicycles, respected leader General William Kinsey Bolton returned from Gallipoli and began advocating for new ways of meeting the specific needs of returning veterans.
He became the first president of the Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League of Australia (later the RSL), which rallied public support for the establishment of veteran homes.
In 2015, then predominantly Victorian home care service RDNS and RSL Care, a residential, home care and retirement living provider predominantly in Queensland and northern NSW, announced a merger and became known as RSL Care + RDNS, before rebranding to Bolton Clarke almost two years later.
Group chief executive officer Stephen Muggleton said the organisation had changed and grown to meet the changing needs of the Australian population.
“We’ve come a long way in 140 years,” he said.
“Our teams have worked through the Great Depression and two world wars and have successfully managed outbreaks of SARS, HIV/AIDS, MERS, Swine Flu and Zika while dealing with a rapidly increasing number of natural disasters and weather events, from bushfires to floods and cyclones.
“What started in 1885 with a single nurse has become so much more thanks to the generosity, kindness and determination of the people who have shaped Bolton Clarke.
“Then and now, we celebrate the teams who have provided care in extraordinary circumstances and who continue to make a difference every day for our clients and residents.”
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