Aged care crisis: Half of all residents in one & two-star staffing homes
A Daily Telegraph investigation has revealed that the majority of Australia’s aged care residents are currently stuck in homes that are staffed at levels considered unacceptable by international standards.
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MORE than half of aged care residents are in homes with one and two-star staffing levels — an international standard that is so low it is unacceptable, an investigation by The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
The industry that looks after our most vulnerable needs at least $3.5bn a year extra in government funding, one of the government’s own experts warned yesterday.
Professor John Pollaers, inaugural head of the federal Aged Care Workforce Strategy Taskforce in 2017, said the $3.5bn figure a year was at the low end of what is needed on top of the $21.4bn the government spends on aged care each financial year.
It would cover the cost of one extra hour of one-on-one care a day from three hours to four hours. The international level is four hours and Australia’s average is three. The extra funding would also cover a 10-15 per cent pay rise for aged care workers to bring them up to the mid-level of health worker pay.
“It’s not a ridiculous amount of money and we don’t know why the hell they aren’t doing it,” Prof Pollaers said.
“We have no choice. The community has to rise up now.
”Nobody wants to touch aged care because it is a hot potato but they have to address the issue within the next 10 years with one quarter of the population over the age of 65.”
A damning report on staffing levels commissioned by the Aged Care Royal Commission found that 57.6 per cent of residents are in homes with staffing that would rate only one or two stars.
The study by the Australian Health Services Research Institute at the University of Wollongong found it would require a 37 per cent increase in total staffing to raise the standard to three stars, or “average”, across the board. The scale, used in the US, is worked out on the amount of time nurses and personal carers spend per resident.
Anthony Bowe, whose mother Patricia Shea, 76, contracted COVID-19 at Sydney’s Newmarch House, said it was up to aged care providers, not residents, to pay more.
“The onus shouldn’t be on us to pay more money to improve the standard of care, or to pay for better skilled staff, but it should be on Anglicare to ensure it has a decent standard of care,” Mr Bowe said.
Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck’s spokesman said the government was delivering record investment in the sector. He said all providers had a responsibility to ensure appropriate staff levels “to ensure delivery of quality care and service to their residents”.
Commonwealth funding for aged care had increased by $5.61 per resident per day between 2016 and 2019, bringing it up to $191.03, the Aged Care Financing Authority reports.