How the boomers will actually affect aged care

Bernard Salt explains how the ageing boomers will have an impact on aged care.

The aged care industry will undergo a series of changes as the baby boomers begin to retire over the next decade, according to Bernard Salt.

The respected demographer and partner with KPMG told the Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA) National Conference in Hobart that the boomers would re-engineer retirement, just as they invented the teenage years in the 1960s.

Mr Salt said the new approach to retirement was the result of a steady increase in life expectancy.

In 1930, the average life expectancy for Australians was 63, in 1970 it was 71 and today it has risen to 82.

“The baby boomers have picked up the teenage phase and transitioned it to a period in their 50s,” he said.

“It is a blurring of the concept of retirement. People will increasingly work beyond 65 but they will re-engineer the space by working longer in a reduced capacity.”

According to Mr Salt, the surge in the numbers of Australians aged between 65 and 74 over the next decade will not have a big impact on residential aged care.

“If they do require services from the aged care industry, it will be on an ‘outsourced’ basis: ‘Deliver it to me in my home’,” he said.

However Mr Salt warned that the industry would have to contend with the challenges of an ageing workforce in coming years.

Close to 40 per cent of the aged care and disability workforce, and a third of the sector’s registered nurses, are aged over 50.

“And we don’t have a whole lot of new nurses coming along in the next few years,” said Mr Salt.
 
“Perhaps some of those nurses can be encouraged to stay on but even if they do, that raises risks around OH&S.

“You are going to have to redesign your jobs and workplaces to accommodate older workers.”

The aged care sector will also need to adapt to Australia’s changing cultural mix.

Mr Salt predicted that the growing number of Chinese and Indian migrants would have a dramatic influence, just as Mediterranean immigrants had a profound effect on postwar Australia.

“There will be a shift in our values and culture,” he said. “Do you understand feng shui? Do you speak Mandarin?

“The minutiae of cultural preferences will start to flow through into housing design – and perhaps even into the design of aged care facilities – in the future,” said Mr Salt.