Aged Care Royal Commission releases scathing interim report
A Royal Commission report has savaged Australia’s aged care sector as “sad and shocking”, with three immediate reforms needed — and a complete overhaul required.
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Three “immediate” reforms are needed to fix Australia’s aged-care system after a “shocking tale of neglect” was laid bare in the royal commission.
A scathing interim report released today labelled the industry a “sad and shocking system” that “diminishes Australia as a nation”.
Royal Commissioners Richard Tracey – who died earlier this month – and Lynelle Briggs identified three key areas that need “immediate” reform.
They are the waiting list for home care, an “over-reliance” on chemical restraints for aged-care residents and stopping the flow of young people with a disability into aged-care homes.
Nursing home providers and seniors advocates are calling on the federal government to make urgent changes saying the troubled sector cannot wait.
The royal commissioners said aged-care services in Australia are underfunded, mostly poorly managed and all too often unsafe and seemingly uncaring.
They said the system does not deliver uniformly safe and quality care for older people, and is unkind and uncaring towards them.
“It is a shocking tale of neglect,” Mr Tracey and Ms Briggs wrote.
The system is woefully inadequate, they said.
“The neglect that we have found in this royal commission to date is far from the best that can be done.
“Rather, it is a sad and shocking system that diminishes Australia as a nation.”
They have called for “significant” extra funding for home-care packages “immediately” and in future years while noting the system was “unable” to deal with the high level of demand.
Australians were dying on the waitlist for home-care packages, while some who needed high-care packages were waiting up to 12 months or more, the report bluntly states.
There was also an urgent need to respond to the “over-reliance” on chemical restraints in aged care.
The commissioners have also flagged an immediate need to stop young people with disabilities going into aged-care homes and measures to fast-track them getting out of aged care where they had already entered the system.
They said Australia had developed an “ageist mindset” towards seniors and a public discourse that was about “burden, encumbrance, obligation and whether taxpayers can afford to pay for the dependence of older people”.
“This failure to properly value and engage with older people as equal partners in our future has extended to our apparent indifference towards aged care services,” they wrote.
“Left out of sight and out of mind, these important services are floundering.
“They are fragmented, unsupported and underfunded. With some admirable exceptions, they are poorly managed.
“All too often, they are unsafe and seemingly uncaring. This must change.”
The interim report also called for an overhaul of the My Aged Care website and the call centre, which has proved “costly” to run and has failed to provide Australians with adequate information.
Oakden whistleblower Barbara Spriggs said how the neglect had gone unnoticed for so many years was a “real disgrace” for the nation.
“They haven’t released anything that we didn’t know,” she said.
“I just hope and pray that we can find, or the government find, the right people and the money to help make these changes, which I think we all know it’s not going to happen overnight.
“We have so much evidence of the failings in aged care, I hope that we can start moving forward.”
Complete overhaul needed
The commissioners said their final report would call for a complete overhaul and “redesign” of the entire system.
Over the next year, the commission will investigate whether there are any “societal barriers” to reforms in aged care.
It would also explore ways to help aged-care providers increase the level of staff and management by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people so aged-care for indigenous Australians could be more ‘flexible, adaptable and culturally safe’.
The commissioners said short-term solutions at best temporarily stave off the worst problems and, at worst, produce another set of unintended outcomes requiring further inquiries and reviews and further injections of public funds, without addressing the underlying causal factors.
“These limited interventions are not enough to deliver an aged care system that meets the needs of older people.”
Minister shocked
Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck said he was shocked by the neglect and extent of mistreatment.
“It puts the government on notice, the industry on notice and it puts the community on notice,” he said.
On home care packages, Mr Colbeck said changes were needed to stop money sitting in funds being unused.
He also said the young people with a disability should not be in aged care homes, and changes to the assessment process was something the government can do “quickly and should”.
Mr Colbeck said government reforms in the aged care sector were already underway. But that the interim report gives him the licence make more changes to improve the delivery of care, including requesting more funding.
He thanked and congratulated the Oakden whistleblowers who raised concerns about the care their loved ones received.
“One of the really important things that royal commission has done is to give people a voice,” Mr Colbeck said.
Leading Aged Services Australia CEO Sean Rooney said critical issues of “support for our workforce, funding and reform” must be addressed to broadly sustain quality care over the next year.
More than 6800 submissions were made to the inquiry, which began hearing evidence in February.
The first reports of mistreatment were given in Adelaide, after the Oakden scandal led to the city being declared “ground zero” in Australia’s nursing home crisis.
Elderly residents at the state government-run Oakden facility were over-medicated, physically abused, isolated and neglected.
Its terms of reference include: the quality and safety of care, how to best deliver care to people with disabilities residing in aged-care facilities including younger people, and the increasing number of people with dementia.
Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck last month confirmed the commission would be extended.
It will now release its final report in November 2020.
— with AAP
Labor seized on the report, blaming the government for failing to look after vulnerable Australians.
“It is shameful that in a wealthy country like Australia older people can’t get the care they need,” Opposition aged care spokeswoman Julie Collins said.
MORE TO COME