Aged care more than transactions, says Fitzgerald

Speaking on the panel for creating a more inclusive aged care system, Age Discrimination Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald urged providers attending the Invox National Support at Home conference to prioritise relationship-centred care as it implements the 1 July reforms and avoid falling into the same trappings the National Disability Insurance Scheme did.

“The NDIS, which I supported when I was a commissioner on the Productivity Commission and still do – despite its many weaknesses – has turned into a transactionalised system where we take an individual with disability and we cut them into a thousand slices and we say each slice is worth something and here’s a piece of money for it,” he told delegates on Tuesday.

The thing that people with disability and older people seek is relationships, said Mr Fitzgerald. He asked providers to reflect on whether they want to be an organisation that valued relationships more than transactions and whether or not they would mimic the commercial market and value transactions above all else.

“You will not get workers if you turn the aged care system into a series of transactions, if you see the buck as more important than the relationships. If you value relationships, the dollars will flow,” he emphasised.

“Now have no doubt about it, in the business of human services, relationships and success go together,” Mr Fitzgerald added.

Also speaking on the panel was St John’s Ambulance chair Mary Patetsos – who is also board director of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia and pro-chancellor of the University of South Australia. There are clear structural and cultural problems within the aged care sector, she told the Melbourne and online audience of over 700 people.

The structural problems come from “reform that is bolted on a system that should have been blown up and just done properly,” Ms Patetsos said. The sector is essentially creating hope that older people can age at home but not creating the capability for them to actually do so, she said.

“We know that if you have dementia and you are at home and you have a carer that is trying to manage, your care needs in home are very high, and we are not funding it to work at that level. But we’re creating a hope that the older person can stay there, and we inevitably don’t meet that hope,” Ms Patetsos told delegates.

“So they end up in hospital or they end up in care somewhere else. That’s the bottom line.”

The other major challenge facing the aged care sector is the workforce – or lack of, Ms Patetsos pointed out.

She shared with the audience that at a recent graduation ceremony of 2,500 nurses, not one of the graduates indicated a desire to specialise in aged care.

She pointed to cultural differences and a sense of undervaluing existing workers in the sector as key reasons for this skirting away from aged care.

For Mr Fitzgerald, combatting the workforce shortages goes hand-in-hand with tackling ageism.

“We did a piece of research recently which spoken to the media itself, journalists, editors, media owners, around how they are portraying ageing and the vast majority said whilst they do some things that are positive, the vast majority of it is negative,” Mr Fitzgerald said.

“If we want to attract workers to the aged care workforce, you’re going to have to convince Australians that ageing isn’t a bad thing, and caring for older people isn’t a bad thing – it’s actually a positive thing and so that’s going to be the challenge for all of us. If we don’t do that, you won’t get workers. People will not join a workforce if they think it’s associated with something bad or terrible.”

Participant carer Richard Crosbie was also on the panel, and journalist Stan Grant moderated the discussion.

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