Federal government agency accused of neglecting South Australian war veterans
A national advocacy group has highlighted the shocking conditions SA Vietnam veterans with PTSD are living in, blaming a federal government agency for missing red flags.
SA News
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A veterans advocacy group has slammed a federal government agency for neglecting elderly Vietnam War veterans with PTSD who are living among faeces and rubbish across Adelaide.
Salute for Service chief executive Marc Diplock claims the My Aged Care program, which is funded by the Department of Health and Aged Care to provide in-home and external intensive support to older veterans, were missing red flags and organising Telehealth appointments rather than home visits.
“They are suffering. They are isolating themselves from depression and agencies aren’t seeing the warning signs,” Mr Diplock said.
“They’re not getting the right care before we started helping them.”
Salute for Service is a not-for-profit group that supports Australian veterans living in their own homes.
In one case, Mr Diplock said an 82-year-old Vietnam veteran with PTSD was found living among piles of rubbish that reached the roof, a kitchen filled with used plastic milk bottles, cobwebs all over the windows and four inches of something dark all over the floor.
“When we first walked in we thought it was dirt,” he said.
“Then we realised it was rat faeces – everywhere.”
Mr Diplock said the man’s main support for most of his life had been his mum but she died 20 years ago and he had deteriorated ever since, despite being a client of My Aged Care.
“We identified four other veterans in almost exactly the same situation or worse,” he said.
“There needs to be more outreach. The veterans feel like a burden, they deserve to be OK.
“They had provided a psychologist by Telehealth but all of these red flags were being missed.”
In another case, Mr Diplock said a female Vietnam veteran with “no family connections and no community connections” was living in such bad squalor that forensic cleaners had to come into the house and replace all the furniture.
Another My Aged Care client, Vietnam veteran Rob, said he engaged the service several years after his wife died.
“Things just started to get on top of me. I just wanted to be left alone,” he said.
Rob was conscripted for the Vietnam War in 1968 when he was 21.
He arrived just after the deadly surprise Tet Offensive attack against the allied forces.
Former police officer Bill Bates, who founded Operation Unity (SA) to support veterans and first responders and their families, said some of the veterans had lived alone for so long it could take weeks just to build their trust enough to be invited in the house.
Mr Bates said he was hesitant to blame a single agency for the veteran neglect but once they got help many “actually cry with happiness”.
Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia South Australia branch president Robert Shahinger said the state some of the veterans were living was “disappointing”.
Mr Shahinger said there was a lack of communication between the DVA and My Aged Care.
However, he said it was a complicated issue because veterans often just refused to engage.
“A lot of them don’t want to be around other veterans because it makes their PTSD worse,” he said.
Mr Shahinger, who joined the Vietnam War as a 20-year-old in 1965 “like many others to escape a dysfunctional home”, said it had also been his observation that more recent veterans “better understand the signs” of PTSD.
Mr Bates, Mr Shahinger and Mr Diplock said the worst of the PTSD hit them later in life once their kids left home and they retired.
A Department of Health and Aged Care spokesman said My Aged Care contact centre staff and aged care needs assessors were trained to support older veterans.
The spokesman said staff worked hard to build an understanding of the unique challenges and considerations when working with older veterans and war widows/widowers.
“The department also trains aged care needs assessors specifically in how to prepare for and conduct an aged care needs assessment for older veterans and war widows/widowers,” he said.
“The government values our veterans and is committed to ensuring they can access the supports they need.”
There are 35,000 surviving Vietnam War veterans in Australia.
The 2021 Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide found an average of 78 serving or ex-serving ADF members have died by suicide each year between 2011 and 2021.
This is a rate 50 per cent higher than the rest of the population.
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