Essential aged care visitors

INDUSTRY CODE FOR AGED CARE... Peak bodies issue new code. Photo: Supplied

TWELVE aged care and consumer peak bodies have recently released an updated ‘Industry Code for Visiting Residential Aged Care Homes’ during COVID-19, which ensures Australians living in residential aged care can safely receive visitors.

The purpose of the Code is to ensure that older Australians living in residential care have as much protection as possible from COVID while ensuring that their mental health and social connections are maintained throughout the pandemic.

The Code signatories are calling for State and Territory Health Directives to list ‘Partners in Care’, who are people who go in every day to support their loved one, as ‘essential care visitors.’

This would mean they are always permitted to visit and provide care at residential facilities during community outbreaks. Their inclusion would be better for the resident, the carer and the residential care provider but they are not currently included in all State/Territory Health Directives.

In response to the more virulent Delta outbreak, the revised Code has been re-endorsed by the Australian Health Principal Protection Committee.

INDUSTRY CODE FOR AGED CARE… Peak bodies issue new code. Photo: Supplied