Labor efforts on home care ‘not good enough’, says Coalition

Labor has ‘squandered’ the progress made on home care under the former Coalition government, with wait times for packages blowing out to up to 15 months.

Former aged care minister Richard Colbeck says it had taken ‘enormous effort’ to get the number of people in the queue for a home care package down to 30,000. Picture: Dan Peled / NewsWire

Labor has “squandered” the progress made on home care under the former Coalition government, with wait times for packages blowing out to up to 15 months, with the Albanese government admitting it will not bring down wait times to Morrison-era levels until 2027.

Reforms to home care are key in Labor’s proposed aged care bill, sets out a new ­financial framework aimed at keeping the sector sustainable and which the ­Coalition has promised it will not seek to change.

However, the government’s $4.3bn support at home program – which will replace the home care packages program and commence in July next year – was criticised because of its goal of reducing wait times to three months by 2027, rather than the Coalition’s aim of 30 days.

The latest data from the Health Department showed elderly Australians were waiting an average of 5½ months for a home care package, while those assigned as having “medium priority” were waiting between nine and 15 months.

This was compared to figures that followed the Coalition’s $17.7bn response to the royal commission into aged care, which achieved its goal of getting wait times down to between one and three months for any level of home care by early 2023 – after it lost government in the May election the year before.

From February last year, wait times began to blow out.

An estimated one million Australians will benefit from the federal government's home care reforms.

While the Coalition added 80,000 home care packages to the system in 2021 as part of the royal commission response, Labor in its budget this year added only an extra 23,400, well below industry calls for 40,000 to match the number of new entrants predicted to enter the system each year.

Council of the Ageing chief executive Patricia Sparrow criticised the blow out in delays elderly Australians faced in getting care. “Older people should never be forced to wait more than 30 days from assessment to having their services delivered,” she said.

“When you’re at the point of needing an assessment for home care support, you’re often at a critical juncture in your life, and delaying care and support at that time can have serious detrimental impacts.”

Ms Sparrow also criticised the government over its figures on waitlists, which she said were being “fudged”.

“We need access to figures and wait times we can trust and rely on. The wait list times that are currently being reported only show a fraction of the real story – the time between an original assessment being completed and being allocated your package by the government,” she said.

“We’re talking about older people waiting for vital services they need to be able to live their life with dignity and in the way they want to. We can’t have a situation where the figures on how long people are having to wait for the support they need are being fudged.”

Former aged care minister Richard Colbeck said it had taken “enormous effort” to get the number of people in the queue for a home care package down to 30,000 and to ensure wait times remained between 30 and 90 days. “To see (our) effort squandered and to see the national priority list blow out to nearly 60,000 and waiting times for some package levels out to 12 months is shameful,” he said.

“The lack of ambition of the government in relation to proposed wait times for a home care package is backsliding from both the royal commission and achievements of the Coalition.”

The opposition’s current aged care spokeswoman, Anne Ruston, said Labor was “playing catch up” after providing 90 per cent fewer packages than the Coalition had over the last two years.

“We were focused on ensuring that no older Australian approved for a home care package would wait more than 30 days,” she said.

“It is unacceptable that the ­Albanese government is happy to leave vulnerable older Australians waiting six months for the care they need, especially when we know that the next generation of older Australians want to stay independent in their own homes.”

A spokeswoman for Aged Care Minister Anika Wells said the government’s goal of getting wait times back to three months – which would be achieved by adding an extra 300,000 packages to the system – balanced “timely access to support” with ensuring the program remained “sustainable” and the ability of the workforce to meet demand.

“The Albanese government is committed to ensuring older people can remain independent in their homes for as long as possible, and to reforming in-home aged care,” the spokeswoman said. “(We are) delivering once-in-a-generation aged-care reforms to fund home care services sustainably into the future through the new support at home program.”

However, Aged and Community Care Providers Association chief executive Tom Symondson said while some areas of the aged-care sector were experiencing challenges with workforce shortages, “most of our members have capacity to support increased investment now”. “Current wait times are leading to unmet care needs of older Australians, negatively affecting their health and quality of life,,” he said.