Failures on aged care are source of national shame

The stress and trauma around a vulnerable loved one’s last years are experienced anew amid reports of Labor’s cost cutting.

The purpose of this program is to help people live with dignity in their own homes, but for so many elderly Australians that remains a dream that will never come true.

My late father was an energetic independent man, well into his early 70s. Until suddenly, one day, he wasn’t.

Late in 2017, after defiantly battling a nasty persistent infection in the bones of his right leg, he copped it sweet. For Bruno, it was a surrender of sorts. Not exactly a white flag, more of a capitulation on his terms. I’ll never forget being in the hospital room with my mum when his surgeon explained the options. It was tense, as you might imagine. Dad, brow furrowed, his weakening body tightly coiled with the anxiety of anticipating the unknown, listened carefully to every word, then piped up in a belligerent voice.

“Listen,” he said. “If you get in there, and you can’t save the leg, don’t bloody wake me up to get me to sign a piece of paper, just go back again. Just cut the bloody thing off.”

So, Dad signed the piece of paper then and there, and later that afternoon the surgeon cut the bloody thing off.

Losing a limb. Traumatic under any circumstances. Going from independent in every way to absolutely dependent on everyone around him. For everything.

What transpired post the surgery added to that trauma and stress exponentially. I’m referring to the process of undergoing an ACAT assessment and then the long, tedious wait for his Home Care package to be approved.

For those unchurched in these matters, the point of a home care package is to allow more Australians to stay in their own homes rather than go into care. There’s a dual purpose of allowing people to live with dignity in place as well as keeping pressure off a stretched aged care system.

Dad went through the process, was assessed at level four – the highest level of need – and was told it would be a six-month wait for his funding to come through.

The funding for Dad’s level four home care package came through on the day of his funeral.

My mother opened the letter when she got home from his wake. Dad was one of an estimated 50,000 elderly Australians who died waiting, so I know ours is not a unique story.

It’s coming up to four years now. The stress and trauma of the last years of his life are beginning to fade but this past week it breathed anew after it was reported that the Albanese government back in January, quietly and almost under the cover of darkness, announced changes that effectively shrink the benefits of some 200,000 Australians who currently rely on home care packages. They deny it. Of course they do. What a thing to admit to.

Gemma Tognini with her father, Bruno.

Some of the changes are nit-picky. Some are unclear. Some are cruel and unfair.

Among those reported, a person can’t claim for heating or cooling their home. That kind of thing. They’re not able to purchase a microwave to prepare food. Not directly healthcare related, apparently. There must be a direct link between the way the funding is spent and an age-­related health issue. Do I need to spell this out?

But the whole purpose of this program is to help people live with dignity in their own homes. If, like my dad, they’re wheelchair-bound with a dozen comorbidities, and they need a fan to keep their bodies from overheating, how is that not part of the equation? If like my dad, he couldn’t cook or safely access a stove, how is it conceivable that something like a microwave doesn’t fall into the category of being related to their medical ­issues?

Things like remedial massage to stop him from developing pressure sores which inevitably got infected. The list is heartbreakingly endless, and I remember it all with searing clarity.

Elderly Australians are extremely vulnerable if poor health makes them dependent on everyone around them.

I suspect the government didn’t announce these changes with any degree of fanfare because they are almost impossible to defend. In any case, it rejects the idea these changes are cuts; rather, it’s been reported as saying that it’s about tidying up the process, not rank stinginess.

Yes, aged care is a policy nightmare. Yes, it’s a budgetary black hole. Four billion dollars a year and then some, and with an ageing population, a problem that’s not going anywhere in the short term. But what does it say about a government that tightens the screws in a manner such as this?

I get that for some of you, what I’m taking about is conceptual. Perhaps your parents and grandparents were blessed with rude health until their time came to leave this earth. But for those of us who’ve walked this road with our loved ones, the word vulnerable doesn’t even touch the surface.

And this is before you consider elderly Australians who have no family. No one to advocate for them. Nobody to plug the gaps and pick up the shortfall the way our little family and a few close friends did for my parents when Dad was still alive.

I don’t understand how we have got our priorities so very wrong. We focus on the cosmetic. Even now, it’s all about confected outrage and perceived conflict. The demon of manufactured ­offence that hides under every dining table.

All the while, elderly Australians are short-changed. All the while this government tosses the words fairness and equity around with cheerful abandon.

I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not pretending it’s a simple problem to solve. But when we allow these things to go unchallenged, it diminishes us all.