Budget 2024: Aged-care package deals for couples growing in popularity

More couples are making it into old age and requiring aged care together. Garry and Bev Nixon have found a solution that works for them.

Garry Nixon, 83, and his wife, Bev, 82, at their aged-care home in Aberfeldie in Melbourne’s inner northwest. Picture: Aaron Francis

Garry Nixon is quick to recall his wedding day to fellow teacher Bev. It was December 19, 1965, in Melbourne, the day Ronald Ryan escaped from Pentridge Prison.

“We were driving up to Wangaratta for the first night of our honeymoon and Bev was petrified we might run into him. Me too, I have to admit,” Mr Nixon says.

Ryan’s freedom was short-lived – 17 days on the run, and then eventually hanged a year later for the murder of prison warder ­George Hodson during the ­escape. He was the last man executed in Australia.

Garry and Bev’s marriage has been a longer affair, 57 years and counting. Now 83 and 82 respectively, they are among a growing number of older Australian couples needing aged care together.

In previous generations, a more common scenario was couples living together in their family home until one died, statistically more likely the husband, and then the wife would move into nursing home care as a single person.

Now care has to be designed around the increasing chance couples will grow old and frail ­together, including options in residential care.

The ageing demographic means government spending on both home care and residential care will continue to grow.

The government’s aged-care taskforce, chaired by Aged Care Minister Anika Wells, has noted that Australians prefer to age in their own homes, and is building its reform agenda around that.

Aged care minister Anika Wells. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It is expected that the number of Australians needing to access government-funded home-care packages will double to two million by 2040. Residential care will remain an important element of the care ecosystem, particularly at the acute end when frailty or dementia become too much to manage at home.

The taskforce is calling for older Australians with the means to do so to contribute more to the non-direct components of their care, both in-home and residential. It is a recommendation set to be embraced by the government.

But not yet. Much to the disappointment of the sector, Tuesday’s budget did not lay out a blueprint for aged-care reform along the lines of the taskforce recommendations.

And the 24,100 new home-care packages announced for the coming financial year, at a cost of $531m, fell short of calls from the sector for up to 80,000 to meet ­rising demand.

Garry now lives in a one-bedroom ground floor serviced apartment in Ryman Healthcare’s Raelene Boyle Retirement Village in Aberfeldie, near Essendon in Melbourne. It offers retirement units and residential aged care for those with dementia.

He is receiving some government-funded home-care supports, while Bev is in residential aged care on the floor above. Like all nursing home residents, her care is subsidised by the government.

“I can just head up and see her. She doesn’t recognise me now, and she can’t communicate,” Garry says. “But I can’t complain, I know she is getting looked after, and that’s a real weight off my shoulders.”

Ryman Healthcare Australia chief executive Cameron Holland said the company’s model of care “is increasingly sought after by couples because it allows them to stay together in the same village community as their needs change”.

“Couples don’t often age in the same way at the same rate, so our approach … reflects the unpredictable reality,” he said.