In the mini-budget of November 2008, the NSW Government announced it was transferring the remaining state-owned aged care facilities to the private sector.

The Wallsend aged care facility was originally one of these facilities.

Growing community opposition, frustration and betrayed individuals protested against this mishandled and demeaning privatisation by stealth.

The central focus of the community campaign was about the residents, their families, community and staff.

Our biggest concern was the need to save money would override the community needs and be to the detriment of the highly specialised care that ma-ny of the residents currently rely on.

The Member for Wallsend put her political career on the line with her unbelievably strong support for the community campaign.

At any one time more than 20,000 people had supported the campaign in one way or another.

The Newcastle Herald described the community-based campaign to stop the sale of Wallsend Aged Care Facility as "one of the Hunter's most prolific and passionate".

This was about the best model of care for the residents and it had been stated that if this cannot be matched, the transfer would not occur.

At WACF there are more than 25 young people with multi-faceted disabilities and especially brain injuries, often on peg feeds or "trachies".

Strikingly, there is no mandated staff-to-resident ratio in the federal-funded aged care sector.

As such, it is the aged care provider's prerogative to determine the adequate number of staff.

Aged care is largely federally-funded and has to compete for registered and enrolled nurses with state governments who have enhanced capacity to increase salaries for these groups and appointed minimum staff ratios numbers to meet resident needs.

The non-government sector generally delivers a good standard of care given their limited resources, but they don't have the staffing ratios state-run facilities provide.