A life raft in the shape of $557 million was recently announced by the Morrison Government to assist Australia's struggling aged care system. Shadow Minister for Ageing and Seniors Julie Collins described it as a "drop in the ocean". That it is. Almost $500 million of the total amount will go towards funding an extra 10,000 high-needs home care packages.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
There are 120,000 people waiting to receive home care for which they've been approved. Many have been waiting for one to two years. Some 16,000 of them have died waiting. And of those who are receiving home care, for many it is below the level of care that they were assessed as needing. Of the 10,000 new home care packages that have been made available, less than one in ten of the 120,000 people waiting for home care will feel the effects.
The half a billion dollars in funding was announced a little over three weeks after the Aged Care Quality and Safety Royal Commission handed down a grim and sobering assessment of the state of aged care in this country. If you go by the saying that a measure of a country is how it cares for its elders, than Australia shamefully does not measure up. Not even close.
The remaining $57 million will go towards reducing the use of chemical restraints in residential aged care, specialist dementia training for care workers and making it possible for young people with disability living in an aged care centre to live elsewhere if they so wish.
While this pre-Christmas funding boost may be a drop in the ocean today, it is certainly a step in the right direction towards starting to address critical issues in the sector.
An ongoing funding commitment in the billions of dollars however is urgently needed to ensure that people in care now and into the future get the quality of care we would all expect and deserve. Frustratingly this is another one-off payment, with no certainty of ongoing funding.
Currently Australia invests almost half the amount of other comparable economies such as the UK and US in aged care services.
With 60 per cent of IRT's revenue being controlled by the Commonwealth, aged care providers who are more reliant on this funding are at considerable sovereign risk and unable to plan effectively for the future.
Just like any other business IRT is planning now five years ahead and you can't do that with any certainty in this climate of knee-jerk, one-off funding catch ups. Worse still, the catch up funding often comes with a red tape noose. Even Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck has himself described the current funding model for residential aged care, set in 2008, as not fit for purpose.
Currently Australia invests almost half the amount of other comparable economies such as the UK and US in aged care services. In 2014-15 government expenditure on aged care was 0.9 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product. The OECD average is 1.7 per cent. So still quite a long way behind even though our rates of ageing per capita are pretty much identical. The sad reality is that Australia's aged care sector is reeling from five successive years of funding cuts.
As I've said in this column before, our organisation alone has forgone around $19 million in government funding cuts in the last three years. For an organisation of our size, that represents the loss of a lot of extra staff, staff wages, improvements and innovation.
If you ask Paul Keating, our nation's superannuation scheme was intended as a safety net and part of that should be for the provision of care and accommodation as we age. Instead, superannuation is largely treated as fun money, used for a Winnebago and overseas travel with little left if any to support the personal costs of aged care.
As longevity increases this issue will only get worse as our 9.5 per cent super guarantee is inadequate if you live beyond 90. We must begin to consider if aged care can ever be adequately funded by the taxpayer alone.
Some such as Keating are calling for an NDIS or Medicare style funding package to provide security in the sector, while others have suggested a form of long-term care insurance that comes through as you age.
One thing is for certain, the government cannot carry the cost burden alone and those who can afford to pay, should do so.
Of the $22.6 billion spent on aged care in 2017-18, one-fifth came from the people receiving aged care services. Politicians need to be brave and address these issues of affordability and sustainability.
Thinking only in three year election cycles won't make a dent in this case.
There needs to be a live discussion now, to successfully bring in changes incrementally.
In the meantime, we are bracing ourselves for the year ahead and we continue to do whatever it takes operationally to make ends meet while the government infuriatingly insists on waiting for the Royal Commission's final report due in November 2020 before taking any real action.
Patrick Reid is the IRT Group CEO
