ON MISSION - A history of the development of Juniper - a Uniting Church Community
lobbying, the Commonwealth government legislated to provide funding to house older people. This was the first significant government attempt to improve life for older Australians since the introduction of pensions almost half a century earlier. The Act provided matching funding for community organisations to build accommodation for ablebodied older people, including cottage homes or flats. By 1970, funding under the 1954 Aged Persons Homes Act had provided accommodation for 30,000 people across Australia.29 Bethshan (Presbyterian, 1955), St David’s (Presbyterian, 1955), Pilgrim House (Congregational, 1956), Rowethorpe (Methodist,
After intense community lobbying ... funding was provided to house older people 1961) and Elimatta (Congregational, 1963) were all opened in the years following the introduction of this government funding. Hardey Lodge was also expanded considerably in the latter 1950s.30 Churches were independently moving towards aged care services out of their own concerns for elderly people, rather than responding to government policy change. Commonwealth funding boosted the budget of many church projects. Frail older people received no support under the 1954 Act. In Melbourne, impoverished older people in inner city areas were found to be dying of starvation and lack of support as they grew ill. Some of the most prominent voices decrying this
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situation were Methodists.31 Methodists in Western Australia had already demonstrated their awareness of, and practical concern, for impoverished older people. Sister Florence of the Central Methodist Mission wrote in 1950: One aspect of Mission work which is ever present and ever urgent is that of old age with its pitiable helplessness and dependence. This problem had, in the post-war years, become considerably aggravated by the lack of accommodation which is everywhere badly felt … The problem of old age is one of the Mission’s greatest anxieties. The cost of living is a severe blow to those who have to live on a pension … In order to be able to pay the rent many of these old ladies live on a good deal less than they should. This is a dreadful thing and one that concerns the Mission greatly. Some of these old ladies are in a desperate plight and when we remember that some of them must surely have been pioneers when the country was a lot younger, we should experience no lack of sympathy or desire to help. 32 Astonishing medical advances and improvements in public health, nutrition and sanitation through the twentieth century brought about increases in life expectancy. By the 1960s, the average age of Australians was again rising, despite the impact of young migrants and high birth rates. Antibiotics, introduced from the mid-twentieth century, reduced the impact of infectious diseases, which had previously been big killers of older people. It became clear that more and more people would live to get old. As greater numbers of people lived longer, more of them also lived with chronic or degenerative conditions, requiring increasing levels of care.33 Studies of patients at Royal Perth Hospital from 1956 to 1959 showed increasing numbers of long-staying patients with chronic illnesses, especially cardiovascular complaints.
Jalland, Old Age in Australia, 2015, pp.137-140 UCH, Celebrating Sixty Years¸2009, p.6-13 Jalland, Old Age in Australia, 2015, pp.130-131 Quoted in Lutton, Wesley, The Wesley Story: Centenary of the Wesley Church, Perth, Central Methodist Mission, Perth, 1970, p.16 Jalland, Old Age in Australia, 2015, pp.6-7