Action needed to address homelessness among older population
Homelessness expert calls upon the aged care sector to work together with the government to tackle the issue, at the ACS State Conference last week.
The aged care sector must band together and petition the government to take action to reduce the growing number of older homeless people within Australia.
This passionate and urgent call to action was sounded by Mission Australia’s CEO, Toby Hall last week at the Aged and Community Services Association (NSW and ACT) State Conference in Sydney.
His speech followed shortly after the opening address by the Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliott, which focused upon the government’s “historic” health care reform, but failed to include any specific mention of poorer, ageing Australians.
“If the [homeless] don’t find care they’ll find death either on the streets or suicide,” Mr Hall said.
“We need to stand up as a sector and tell the pollies that this is an issue we need to deal with right now.”
According to Mission Australia, the number of aged homeless people increased more than 30 per cent from 2001 to 2006. Of the 105,000 of Australians currently homeless, an alarming 26,000 people sleep rough every night.
Around 2,600 homeless people also suffer from a severe mental health issue. This number will “grow to be the aged homeless” in the future if specialist care is not provided.
Mr Hall predicted that Australia’s future housing and health needs will far outweigh our need to combat climate change, and in 20 years time, 20,000 extra houses will need to be built in inner city Sydney alone just to support its ageing population.
Admitting that there was “no silver bullet solution” to solving the aged care and housing crisis, Mr Hall encouraged the sector to work together with the government to bring about positive change.
Government policy, he said, must generate housing support for the long-term disadvantaged, housing solutions for the aged within their own community and specific housing reforms that target older singles and couples.
The choice of supporting the disadvantaged in society is “ours as a people,” with the true test of reform being judged according to “how well we support the disadvantaged elderly at the point when they really need looking after.”
