Aged care: quality of life funding ‘shouldn’t be so hard to get’

Funding to maintain the elderly’s quality of life in their neighbourhood is critical to mental wellbeing, says Multicultural Aged Care CEO Rosa Colenaro.

Multicultural Aged Care chief executive Rosa Colenaro and her mother, Adina Colenaro, at Adina’s Adelaide home, which she moved into 60 years ago. Picture: Russell Millard

In her job as chief executive of Multicultural Aged Care, Rosa Colenaro helps people from culturally diverse backgrounds secure aged-care services, but even she took 16 months to obtain the appropriate level of home care for her 87-year-old mother, Adina.

She knows that without her being in her mother’s corner, Adina would still be waiting for her 12 hours of personal care a week to help her shop, go to appointments and get dressed.

The process would have simply been too much.

“Would an 87-year-old really wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, I think I need some new support services, so I’ll Google MyAgedCare and run through the website’s requirements?’ ’’ she says. “It just doesn’t happen.

“My mum’s got a lot of spunk, but being online is just not really in her world.

“I’m pretty savvy with the system, but even so, she didn’t get her Level 4 package for well over a year, so we were privately supporting her in that time.” Ms Colenaro agrees with counsel assisting the aged care royal commission Peter Gray’s call to provide other pathways to aged care beside the MyAgedCare website. She says asking older people to navigate the website is too much, particularly for those with limited English.

“They’ll say there are helpers who can talk on the phone, but that doesn’t help those with poor hearing or who are struggling in their non-preferred language. I know my mother’s English has begun to slip away as she’s gotten older and she’s reverted to Italian.”

Adina still lives in the same Adelaide house she moved into 60 years ago, goes to the same church, uses the same chemist. Her friends are in the area.

Ms Colenaro says funding her to maintain her quality of life in her neighbourhood is critical to her mother’s mental wellbeing. “All they want is to live in their home, stay in their community and get a little support to do that. Quality of life is giving them what they want, not asking them to accept what they’re given.”