Our treatment of the aged is a disgrace
It is a sad reflection upon Australian society that more people seem to give a damn about the plight of illegal immigrants than people left lonely and mistreated in aged care facilities, writes Mike O’Connor.
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I went to mass last Sunday and listened to the priest deliver a sermon on love.
My attendance was due not to a sudden attack of piety or Catholic guilt but to my mother’s residence in an aged care community. Mum is 92 and my siblings and I take it in turns to wheel her down from the room she now calls home to the chapel which is part of the complex.
It was my turn last Sunday so I sat there surrounded by senior citizens, my own grey hairs fitting comfortably with thoseof the congregation, while the priest repeated Christ’s urging to love each other “as I have loved you.”
There is precious little love, however, being expended on our aged as revealed in a Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union submission to the Palaszczuk government’s inquiry into aged care.
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The union’s secretary Beth Mohle said the chaos and trauma that surrounded the recent closure of the Earle Haven aged care facility on the Gold Coast had revealed the absolute lack of federal laws regarding how these facilities are staffed.
She accused the federal government of repeatedly refusing to introduce staffing laws to provide safe care in private aged care facilities, describing its actions as “ageist and cruel.”
“There is no federal legal requirement for even one registered nurse to be on site at all times,” she said. “As a result, it is not illegal to leave any number of private aged-care residents without an RN.”
It is also possible for approved aged care providers to subcontract services to non-approved providers at will with no government oversight. What a joke!
Old people have a tendency to become invisible to the rest of the population. They exist in their communities comfortably out of sight and mind while the rest of us get on with the important business of living our lives.
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Looking around the chapel I saw people, mainly women, in varying states of frailty. Very few were attended by relatives for it is a sad truth that once an aged person has been settled into a facility they join the ranks of the forgotten people, to be visited on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day and precious few days in between.
“It’s not our fault,” we tell ourselves. “It’s just that we are so busy.”
Many old people are also loath to complain if they feel the level of care they are receiving is substandard. They don’t want to “make a fuss”, a reticence which makes them easy prey for aged care providers looking to cut costs.
It falls to the federal government to ensure that their human rights are protected and on the evidence it has failed miserably in this duty.
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It’s sad how people and politicians can so easily be moved to tears and take to the streets in support of illegal immigrants while being blind and uncaring to the plight of their elders.
They can rally to protect the black throated finch but turn their backs on people who are regarded as having lived past their use-by date.
When I visit my mother, I’m reminded of what my late father once said. “My body might be old but in my mind I feel the same as I did when I was 25,” he told me.
There are certain to be more revelations made at the inquiry, none of them pleasant but inquiries are one thing and implementing their findings another.
The federal government needs to prioritise the care of our aged for in their minds, they still feel 25 and can remember those days when their lives, so full of promise, stretched before them.
Mike O’Connor is a columnist for The Courier-Mail.
Originally published as Our treatment of the aged is a disgrace