NewDirection Care Founder and CEO Natasha Chadwick has become the first provider to take out two categories at the 2021 innovAGEING National Awards.

NewDirection Care won the Enhancing Consumer Experience award and Ms Chadwick was awarded Age Services Innovator of the Year.

“Innovation is the only way forward if we want to improve aged care in the future,” said Ms Chadwick.

“As I highlighted in my acceptance speech, it’s not only up to aged care providers to innovate and I call now on our Government and the Quality Commission to join us on our journey to innovate and transform our aged care industry.”

NewDirection Care won the Enhancing Consumer Experience category “for their work in reimagining aged care through a resident-centred, de-institutionalised model, and where success is not measured by revenue and profitability, but by the changes NDC has made to the lives of residents and their families”.

Ms Chadwick was awarded the Age Services Innovator of the Year Award “for her work in developing a facility that centres on an inclusive village-like community known as a MICRO TOWN®, where people live together with shared facilities allowing mutual support, freedom of movement, and choice, all in a familiar home-like atmosphere.”

NewDirection Care Bellmere launched in late 2017 at Bellmere, 50km north of Brisbane, to provide care for people with complex care needs including younger onset dementia. Ms Chadwick has been joined by her son Justin and brother Greg in the business.

Read SATURDAY magazine’s INNOVATION issue with Natasha Chadwick on the cover.