Dr Max Diment, IRT’s respected pioneer, had a vision to create communities where seniors achieve their optimum quality of life. In 1968 he brought together a committee of like-minded people and planning started for ways to move toward our first seniors living development in the Illawarra.
It was during 1969 that Wollongong City Council donated land on Staff Street for IRT’s first community, IRT Diment Towers, and development was approved.
On 14 November 1969 IRT was officially incorporated as a company, and in 1971 IRT Diment Towers became the first seniors living high rise in the Wollongong CBD, combining both lifestyle living and care services.
IRT’s growth continued over the next 40 years with our first community on the NSW South Coast, Daisy Street Lodge, opening in 1975. Our first Sydney-based community, IRT Peakhurst, opened in 1992 and IRT Kangara Waters, our first community in the ACT, received its first residents in mid-2009. In 2012, IRT expanded into Queensland.
In 1992 IRT was selected as one of only three organisations in NSW to pilot the first Community Services programs for seniors choosing to remain at home, and now IRT offers several hundred packages.
As a Registered Training Organisation since 1998, IRT has been able to formally train and educate staff, and is now nationally recognised throughout the industry.
In 2009, IRT took an active approach in its aim to raise funds for and progress projects that assist in providing a greater understanding of the ageing process and the care and wellbeing of seniors, and launched the IRT Research Foundation. Three inaugural research grants were announced in 2010, totalling $120,000 in funding from the Foundation. There have been annual competitive grants rounds every year since.
IRT began in the Illawarra as a truly community based, non-denominational, seniors lifestyle and care provider and for over 40 years has maintained this foundation. IRT has only achieved such growth and success from the trust that our residents and clients place in us, a responsibility that we treat with the utmost respect, and which has arisen from the passion of the IRT team and their dedication to our seniors.
From little things, big things grow.
