The Prime Minister recently announced that he would provide an extra $362M for residential aged care, however if you divide that by the number of people in residential aged care, and then divide that by the number of days in a year, it means that it there is another $3.11/person per day, which sadly just won’t be enough.
Not wanting to sound ungrateful, the sector desperately needs as much extra funding as it can get, however IF the Government is genuine about wanting to fix the problems in aged care, then $362M just won’t do the job. The other side of politics has also been very quiet about aged care, no announcements leading up to the election from Labour either.
There was a figure thrown around that to re-open Christmas Island detention centre would cost the tax payer $1.8 Billion, which if used for aged care would provide an extra $15.50 per person per day, & this would equate to another 5-7 more nurses in a 60 bed aged care facility & more in bigger facilities.
The reality is this, aged care is underfunded. The Four Corners story highlighted two major issues in aged care;
- Abuse &
- Neglect
Abuse, sadly will probably never be eliminated, unfortunately we have abusive teachers, abusive policemen, abusive council workers, abusive priests and yes even abusive aged care workers. Abuse is simply bad people doing bad things. The best we can hope for is for aged care facilities to adopt more scrutiny in employing staff and more training for staff to deal with aggressive residents who have dementia. The other side to abuse is that there is an aged care worker assaulted by a resident every day (it comes with the territory when dealing with dementia), so aged care work is not easy, but the media never show that side of the story, the media show assaults on ambulance drivers, but not aged care workers.
The other area the Four Corners story highlighted was that of neglect. In interviewing residents, family of residents and even staff at some aged care facilities, the common theme was “not enough”.
That is, not enough staff, not enough registered nurses, not enough training, not enough pay (nurses in aged care are paid less that nurses in the hospital and acute care area), not enough resources. This problem can easily be fixed, simply employ more staff, employ more registered nurses, increase the pay rates, conduct more training. However, IF the answer was that simple then why does this problem exist – because nobody wants to pay for it.
The NSW Nurses Association is calling for a “Change of rules” so that mandated nurse to resident ratios be adopted in aged care and claiming that Scott Morrison has missed the opportunity to bring in mandated ratios, and therefore “time to change the Government”. However, will any political party have the nerve to allow it to happen. Mandated Nurse to resident ratios will simply cost a great deal more, and yes it will go along way to reducing the “neglect” that exists is some facilities, but there is simply not the political will to pay for it. It would be an interesting exercise to determine exactly how many staff would it take to deliver a world class aged care service and then what would this cost, to see exactly how much would be needed to pay for a world class aged care system.
The Royal Commission into aged care will highlight all the problems, but it hasn’t produced to same uproar that the banking Royal Commission produced. The entire aged care industry knows what the major problems are, it is underfunded. You can’t compare aged care to child care. Child care is 5 days a week, from around 8am to 6pm, however aged care is 24 hours a day (3 shifts of staff), 7 days a week, including Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Easter and all public holidays, so the wages bill is significantly higher than child care. The aged care industry wants to use the Royal Commission to bring about positive change, however if the funding is not going to be forthcoming to provide enough staff in order to deliver appropriate levels of care, then the Royal Commission will be a waste of time and tax payers money. The very great majority of aged care workers do a fantastic job of providing care and dignity to our elderly and vulnerable, and do so under difficult circumstances, they would love to have better pay, and more staff to help ease their workload, then we could have an aged care system that people would want to go to. Keep in mind that there are many aged care facilities that are beautiful places, provide single rooms and have enough staff, but they tend to charge more, which not everybody can afford.
We have been helping the public determine the best way to pay for their aged care, and work their way through the bureaucratic maze for 20 years, & have helped some 13,500 people move into care in the last 10 years. We did a survey of our clients after the Four Corners story, as to whether the neglect & abuse was as rampant as Four Corners would have us believe. 90% of responses was positive and “all good”, “no problems -apart from very minor issues”. The remaining 10% felt that there was neglect (ie “not enough”), so we asked them whether they would be prepared to pay more to their aged care facility to be able to afford more staff, and their reply was unanimous- NO.
Therefore, if the public is not prepared to pay more for aged care and the Government is unwilling to fund it to the level needed to deliver appropriate levels of care, then nothing will change. If the Government had the political will to FULLY fund the NDIS to support our disabled, then why can’t we fully fund aged care to support our elderly and frail, surely they deserve it.
Want to read more? – Aged care workforce needs to triple by 2050, inquiry hears
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