Aged-care overhaul but ‘wait times key’

An extra 10,000 aged-care places for Australians requiring high-level care at home has been welcomed by the sector.

NDIS Minister Stuart Robert watches as Scott Morrison announces extra funding for aged care. Picture: AAP

An extra 10,000 aged-care places for Australians requiring high-level care at home has been welcomed, but the Morrison government is being urged to swiftly introduce broader reforms to reduce waiting times.

Flanked by his Health Minister, Aged Care Minister and National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister, Scott Morrison unveiled a $537m package on Monday to pay for the extra home-care places, ­reduce chemical restraints used on elderly patients and move all Australians under the age of 65 with a disability out of residential aged care by 2025.

The government’s response to the aged-care royal commission’s interim report was seized on by leading aged-care groups, with the Council on the Ageing saying it was missing a long-term plan to cut wait times for home-care ­places to a maximum of 60 days. An estimated 120,000 Australians are waiting for home-care packages.

“You can’t do all of them at once … but we really need a stepped plan over several years that can give everybody confidence we’re going to reach the government’s own nominated maximum time of 60 days,” council chief executive Ian Yates said. “If you have a time frame around that, people can plan and you can look at other short-term measures. At the moment we’re having 10,000 in one announcement, then 10,000 in another. What’s the strategy?”

 

Leading Age Services Australia chief executive Sean Rooney said the government had been told residential care services required $1.3bn in additional operational funding now to avoid the risk of closures, services failures and job losses. The sentiment was echoed by the Health Services Union and United Workers Union, which warned Australia could not wait for the final recommendations of the royal commission due next ­November for a comprehensive overhaul.

Mr Morrison appealed to families with loved ones in aged care, assuring them he was dealing with the “shocking and disturbing” ­issues revealed in the royal commission. “I know quite precisely the sorts of things that you are thinking about at the moment when it comes to the treatment of your loved ones in aged care,” he said. “My family is no different to yours in that respect.

“This is hard. And you just want to be assured that they’re going to get the care. I want that as much for your family as I want it for mine. I want the response of our government to have the same level of deep care and responsibility.”

The bulk of the money — $496.3m — will fund the home-care packages to be rolled out from Sunday, while another $25.5m will improve medication management programs to reduce the use of chemical restraints and establish new restrictions and education for prescribers.

There will be $10m for ­additional dementia training and support, and $4.7m to help meet the new targets to remove younger people with disabilities from residential aged care — starting with removing the 170 Australians under 45 by 2022.

There are 3788 younger people with disabilities across 1416 centres in aged care, and NDIS Minister Stuart Robert said the government was working with providers to house them.

Labor ageing spokeswoman Julie Collins said the government’s “miserly package” did not go far enough. “The interim report of the royal commission described the unacceptable number of older Australians waiting for home care as ‘unsafe practice’ and ‘neglect’. The government has failed these older Australians,” she said.