What’s missing from the ‘care’ plan Lincoln Hopper, St Vincent’s Care Services CEO, offers his view of the reform needed in aged care.
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here is something truly significant missing from the federal government’s $17.7 billion aged care reform package – people. While I support the intention of the reforms, I believe the proposed investment in staffing – primarily focused on nursing and deeply rooted in a clinical model of care – is limited and potentially misleading. But perhaps I’m being too harsh. Budgets are about priorities and perhaps the government could simply not find an extra $10 billion a year with all the competing priorities. That is, after all, a lot of money. Of course, in a few years the government will hand out the stage three tax cuts worth $16 billion a year. More than half of those tax cuts go to the top 20 per cent of taxpayers. Budgets are indeed about priorities. The lack of dollars translates into a lack of care. A good example of this was the waiting list for Home Care Packages (HCP). The government announced an additional 80,000 HCPs, which sounded great – until you realised it would take two years to deliver them and the waiting list at the end of last year (2020) was 97,000. It simply won’t fix the problem. Of most concern since the May Budget announcement has been how things have gone ominously silent. We might think the government is earnestly beavering away in the background, implementing the royal commission’s suggested reforms, ensuring that the horrible stories that were uncovered will never happen again. This would be a reasonable assumption if the government had a track record of achievement after announcements. But the current government has perfected the art of looking busy. It makes lots of announcements without actually following through. I fear that hearing nothing means that nothing is happening. After all, reform is hard. It requires a plan, and dedication. The royal commission provided the government with the plan, but does it have the dedication to follow through? Matt Grudnoff is a senior economist at The Australia Institute. You can enjoy more of his commentary in the Spin Bin in episodes such as What the Government’s Not Telling You About the Future.
There is much more to caring than meeting someone’s medical needs. Aged care is just that – care. Most of us who work in the sector see care in a much more holistic sense, and we consider it to be a vital part of providing exceptional, all-round support, as well as ensuring our residents feel valued and safe. We need to take a human-centred approach when working across our aged care homes; to shift away from focusing on a medical model, to one that emphasises investment in our people. At St Vincent’s Care Services, we have over 550 lifestyle team members, volunteers and pastoral carers. These aren’t clinical roles, but their work is absolutely crucial when it comes to residents enjoying rich and meaningful lives. So, why aren’t we talking more about these contributions when it comes to debating how to improve aged care, and provide residents with the best experience possible? These are our residents’ homes, not a hospital, and for many, our staff are like a second family. The work of these staff must be recognised and brought into the conversation. They shouldn’t be overlooked as they seem to have been by those with the task of delivering aged care reform. We also know that outside of the clinical, there are a host of other staffing-related factors that influence quality outcomes, including the skills, qualifications and experience of these dedicated staff members, the quality of training, organisational culture and the capacity of managers and leaders. We can’t take a rigid, cookie-cutter approach to the nature, make-up and skills mix of staff. This is an edited version of the original article.
YourLifeChoices Retirement Affordability Index™ November 2021
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