Aged care problem will hurt us all
Australia’s aged care workers are the first responders in a demographic cataclysm that is already upon us, and it’s a problem that will affect many of us in the most personal way, argues Michael Madigan.
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They can earn less than a worker at a supermarket checkout yet over the next decade they will probably be subject to more public vilification, abuse and slander than all our politicians and seven-figure-earning corporate CEOs combined.
“They’’ are Australia’s aged care workers, the first responders in a demographic cataclysm that is already upon us, and will rapidly intensify in the decade ahead.
Never before in human history have so many elderly people looked to so few young people to underwrite their care in old age.
With the extended family and all its attendant buffers against poverty and neglect and loneliness in our declining years now largely a thing of the past, most Australians will be looking to the state to care for them in their last years on earth.
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And the people doing the actual caring are, according to reports out this week, routinely hit, groped and abused while being paid wages often less than they could make in the comparative comfort and safety of an Aldi checkout.
The Australian newspaper reported evidence heard at the aged care royal commission this week that assault and sexual assault of carers were commonplace in the industry.
Health Workers Union industrial officer Lisa Alcock pointed to wages and safety concerns as the two biggest concerns among aged care workers.
“Quite frankly I think we have a culture at the moment that accepts that in aged care … if you work in this industry, you should be prepared to be assaulted, and sexually assaulted, on a weekly basis,’’ Ms Alcock told the commission.
Many middle aged Australians may still have an idealised version of old age gleaned from memories of grandma in the spare room, surrounded by chattering kids just home from school or being helped to the dinner table by mum to share the nightly meal with the family.
Into the final weeks of grandma’s life, even up until the mid-20th Century, might have come the black veiled figure of a Sisters of Saint Joseph nun who, in a sparsely furnished “old people’s home,’’ may have gently administered to her ailing charge with a vocational selflessness.
Today aged care is highly subsidised but, simultaneously, highly corporate, with bottom line considerations at the forefront of many operators’ minds.
Hence the lousy wages paid to workers who can’t all be expected to treat aged care residents with a spiritually-inspired devotion, or with the love and affection they might bestow on an elderly family member.
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The job they are expected to do is quite extraordinary — to minister to the demands of multiple patients each day while maintaining their composure when confronted with abuse or physical attack from people often dealing with a cruel and creeping dementia which makes them no longer responsible for their actions.
Few of our aged care workers have any real training in dealing with people requiring specialised help because of physical or mental impairment.
And none of them can expect any public sympathy when the inevitable media reports appear exposing the neglect and maltreatment which will become more frequent in aged care homes in the years ahead as work pressures escalate.
It will be ten years ago this coming February that then Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan released the 2010 Intergenerational Report which outlined the problem laying in wait for this nation as workforce participation rates dropped and elderly Baby Boomers demanded more from health and aged care services.
In 2010 one quarter of all government spending went into health. The Intergenerational Report predicted that by 2050 half of all government spending would go towards health care, aged pensions and aged care.
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If, as a nation we are going to seriously apply ourselves to the challenge of looking after our elderly, we must accept that we will need thousands of trained, specialised and well paid aged care workers operating in an environment where appropriate security ensures they can be confident about their own safety.
That is going to require a significant rise in tax receipts which means Treasury hands will be reaching far more deeply into workers’ pockets in the decade ahead, a situation bound to cause resentment among younger workers.
But, as a nation, we can’t just happily chew on the red meat that media reports will occasionally throw our way about neglect in aged care homes as a way of assuaging our collective guilt about the plight of the elderly.
We can’t just point an accusatory finger at systemic failing that are not the fault of aged care workers, many of whom do the best they can with the scant resources they have.
We are going to have to cough up, and pay to give dignity and comfort to elderly Australians who deserve nothing less.
Michael Madigan is a columnist for the Courier-Mail.
Originally published as Aged care problem will hurt us all