WE are all impacted by aged care in this country and how we address it largely impacts on how we will one day be treated.
The Aged Care Budget 21 is a signal in the right direction for everyone in involved in aged care. The budget announcements are underpinned by Government’s acceptance of 126 of the 148 recommendations made in the Aged Care Royal Commission’s final report and layout a five-year reform program for the industry. This program is based on five pillars and signals the beginning of a transformational change to the current system.
Those pillars are home care, residential care, residential care quality and safety, the workforce and finally, governance.
The additional investment in home care packages (HCP) and the increases in funding and care hours and funding for residential aged care will assist many providers to become more viable and sustainable. However, with around 102,000 people on the HCP waitlist, the 80,000 packages over two years does not solve the problem. It would be good to have the waitlist gone.
Veronica Jamieson, CEO for Shepparton Retirement Villages (SRV) said, “The announcement of the $10 per day supplement per resident per day will lead to an immediate financial improvement for SRV.
“Workforce will be the major challenge for SRV and all providers going forward. The appropriately trained workforce is not there nor are the numbers of people. Whist there is an investment in workforce, the issue for aged care will be to find the staff to do the work. With a hold on migration, it is going to be hard. It would have been ideal if the budget had allowed more funding to increase wages overall for all staff involved in direct care.
“The investment in improving quality and safety and regulatory oversight is welcomed and should further re-instil community confidence in the aged care industry. With the increased funding in this area there will be more need for SRV to be prepared for more unannounced visits from the commission.”
This budget has offered a convincing response to the report of the royal commission on aged care. The report said fixing the broken system would take extra spending of about $10B a year. Had the industry been funded to this level we would have achieved what we really need, a world class system. Australia is still behind the leading OECD countries who spend 2.5% of GDP on Aged Care. There is still a way to go before we achieve this.
