‘No leadership’ on young people in aged care, royal commission hears

Counsel assisting the Aged Care Royal Commission has ripped into the Morrison government’s ‘Claytons action plan’.

Youngcare connect manager Shane Jamieson and Youngcare family liaison officer Pep Hampson.

The Morrison government’s “Claytons action plan” for younger people in residential aged care was symptomatic of a “distinct lack of leadership” on the issue, the Aged Care Royal Commission has heard.

Counsel assisting the Commission Richard Knowles on Friday delivered a scathing assessment of efforts to address what he said was a “fundamental issue of human rights”.

“There has been a distinct lack of leadership on this issue despite the Commonwealth having clear ownership of the policy and the funding mechanisms that underpin it,” he told the Commission.

Wrapping up a week long hearing in Melbourne into how to improve the lives of people under the age of 65 currently living in residential aged care, Mr Knowles tore into the government’s action plan.

“The lack of concrete targets and milestones associated with the action plan is simply startling,” he said.

“It appears to have been completed without proper consultation with all interested parties and without a full understanding of exactly who is in the target group. State governments, as we’ve heard, were evidently not consulted.

“We are left to ponder how the action plan will achieve its goals without clear and measurable targets. We are also left with the distinct impression that those goals are too vague and too modest, or both.”

“(It) cobbles together a number of disparate projects with limited connection to the root causes of younger people being admitted to aged care,” Mr Knowles said.

In March, the Morrison government launched a six-page plan to “minimise the need for younger people to live in aged care facilities”. It set out goals to support the 6,000 people under 65 currently living in aged care out to find alternative accommodation by 2025, and to halve the number of new entrants by 2025.

Mr Knowles said the government’s goals allowed for 1,000 younger people a year to enter residential aged care after 2025. “That is simply not acceptable,” he said.

“It is shocking that even now around 40 people under the age of 65 are being admitted on average into residential aged care each week. And that figure has not substantially changed over the last decade and even earlier.”

Mr Knowles said evidence given earlier Friday by Bronwyn Morkham, National Director, Young People in Nursing Homes National Alliance, about the action plan was compelling.

“We can understand why Dr Morkham referred to it as a Clayton’s action plan,” he said.

In an at times emotional address, Mr Knowles called for an end to the decades of empty rhetoric and blame shifting, and said people under the age of 65 simply shouldn’t be in nursing homes.

Bronwyn Morkham, National Director, Young People in Nursing Homes National Alliance

“Residential aged care has become the solution for gaps in other systems. Living in residential aged care deskills and disempowers younger people … leads to isolation and physical and psychological deterioration and in some cases results in neglect and unsafe care,” he said.

“The striking dichotomy between the life of younger people in aged care facilities and their life in the community shows why, save for very limited exceptions, residential aged care should not be used to provide care to younger people.”

“Evidence this week leaves us in absolutely no doubt about the question of younger people in residential aged care being fundamentally one of human rights,” he said.

Mr Knowles said he strongly supported submissions made during the hearings that no younger people should be entering aged care by 2022, and that no younger people should be in aged care at all by 2025.

Commissioner Lynelle Briggs told the hearing that the fact young people were in residential care was a “sorry story”.

“People with disabilities and young people with disabilities living in aged care should be given the opportunity to have a life and to live in the community,” Commissioner Briggs said.

“There does need to be speedy action and my fellow Royal Commissioner and I are very committed to making strong recommendations in this area,” she said.

The Commission resumes its hearings in October.