Julie’s finance function unravelled overnight. This is how Sapphire Coast Community Aged Care Group (SCCACG) rebuilt their finance function from the ground up.
Context
Sapphire Coast Community Aged Care Group (SCCACG) is a not-for-profit aged care provider based on the New South Wales South Coast, operating across three service streams, residential aged care, home care, and retirement living, and supporting close to 600 clients.
In mid-2023, SCCACG’s incoming CEO Julie Evans stepped into the role during one of the most demanding periods the aged care sector has seen. Eighteen months in, with several significant organisational projects running simultaneously, the finance function unravelled without warning. Two senior finance team members departed in quick succession. One with little notice, one with none. Taking institutional knowledge with them and leaving critical processes undocumented and, in some cases, unrecoverable.
Payroll was due, billing had stalled and claims needed to be made. With multiple projects already in motion, Julie had no runway to absorb it.
The Challenge
The immediate operational risk was significant. Without the people who had owned the processes, SCCACG faced the prospect of missed claims, delayed billing across three service streams, and a board without the financial visibility it needed to govern effectively.
But the deeper problem was structural. Like many aged care providers, SCCACG’s finance function had become person-dependent rather than process-dependent. Institutional knowledge lived in individuals, not in systems or documentation. When those individuals left, they took the function with them.
This is not an isolated story. Aged care finance is a specialist discipline and the sector has consistently underestimated what that skill set requires. Providers are often asking a generalist to operate in the middle of a highly specialised environment, managing fees, funding, billing, regulatory compliance, and reporting simultaneously. When the right person is in the seat, it works. When they leave, the gap is rarely visible until it becomes a crisis.
For Julie, the crisis arrived fast. With no time to recruit, no documented processes to hand to an interim, and a new Finance Manager in Neville just finding his footing, SCCACG needed specialist support immediately. Not in a month.
The Approach
Julie’s first call was to Peter Morley, CEO of Provider Assist. PA had worked with SCCACG previously. There was no time for discovery phases or lengthy onboarding. PA was operational within days.
What SCCACG received was not a single consultant parachuted in to hold the fort. It was a team.
Carolyn, Victoria, Cynthia and Shavin from PA delivered the engagement, but the model was deliberately layered. Carolyn worked directly alongside Neville, operational, hands-on, working through processes end to end as he built his capability. Victoria worked with Julie at the executive level, providing a sounding board, a progress check, and the kind of frank conversation a CEO needs when rebuilding confidence in their own finance function. Cynthia, who joined PA towards the tail-end of the project, supported Neville to rebuild reporting tools and frameworks. And in the background, Shavin ensured claims were submitted, processes were documented and worked with SCCACG’s technology vendors to resolve roadblocks that needed to be cleared.
Each layer of the team served a different need. None of them overlapped unnecessarily. The engagement was structured in phases: stabilise first, then rebuild reporting, then transfer capability to Neville. Crucially, there was no hard end date. Handover happened as readiness happened, not according to a project timeline.
What We Delivered
The first priority was ensuring finance operations continued. Within the first month, billing and claims were stabilised across all three service streams. Board reporting, delayed by one month while the team got across the data, was back on track shortly after.
For Julie, the relief was immediate but it wasn’t just operational.
Equally important was what Julie didn’t feel. No judgement. No sense that SCCACG had failed or that the situation was unusual. PA arrived with a proposal, a clear scope, and the immediate credibility of an organisation that understood exactly what it was walking into.
Process documentation was built and handed over as each workstream was completed, so that when Neville took ownership of a process, he was taking ownership of something solid. Training and support ran in parallel for Neville, for Julie, and for the wider team, building capability rather than creating reliance.
Where They Are Now
Today, SCCACG’s finance function looks nothing like the one that unravelled in late 2023.
Neville leads the finance team with confidence, generating reports on demand, managing month-end processes independently, and continuing to develop the tools and frameworks he built with PA. The board reporting suite, constructed during the engagement, has since been refined by Neville based on direct feedback from the board. Where Julie once waited for financial information, she now asks for it mid-month and has it within the day.
What strikes Julie most is not just what changed, but how. The engagement didn’t create dependence, it transferred ownership. Neville’s view of the work PA delivered was not that it solved his problems, but that it gave him the foundation to solve them himself. He has taken that foundation and built on it.
SCCACG’s transformation is one we are proud to have been part of. Julie, Neville, Louise and the team faced enormous pressure and came out the other side stronger and more confident than ever. Watching them go from strength to strength is exactly why we do this work.
Provider Assist Team
Author
