Aged care providers need to be given greater flexibility to make the best decisions about the people they care for, the opposition spokesperson on aged care has told an industry conference.
Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care Anne Ruston thanked the providers and people caring for older Australians at the International Dementia Conference in Sydney on Friday, saying she has seen exceptional care firsthand.
“I’ve been absolutely blown away at the innovative way that the sector is responding to dementia, in the way that they are designing and operating their homes around Australia,” Senator Ruston told around 1,000 delegates.
However, she said the challenges facing the sector – driven by an ageing population, older people’s preference to stay at home longer and workforce shortages – were a serious reminder that everyone needed to work together to support older Australians.
Senator Ruston said it was time to better consider things like how to plan for a sector that focuses on reablement through the final years of life and recognises that dementia and palliative care were going to be the norm in aged care homes rather than the exception.
“The thing that really amazes me – and not in a good way – has been the episodic approach that government, policy and regulation have taken to issues facing older Australians. We don’t see ageing as a journey. We may say we do, but if you have a look at what we do, that is certainly not the case.”
It is instead a series of unintegrated things through different levels of government and bureaucracy, which are complicated and confusing for older Australians, and each come with different rules and means testing arrangements, she said. The private sector, on the other hand, has been more innovative about how it responds to ageing, such as including retirement and supported independent living with nursing homes, Ms Ruston added.
“We need to be giving greater flexibility to you to make the best decisions about the people that you care for. We need to be supporting the innovative approaches that you put forward, and particularly when it comes to dementia care; care that really does have an impact on the lives of Australians.”
On workforce, Ms Ruston said she understood it was the number one challenge providers were facing and was surprised it was explicitly excluded from the Aged Care Taskforce deliberations on funding reform.
I understand that reforms are absolutely important, but no reform is going to be able to be delivered if you don’t have the workforce through which to deliver that reform
She said she would have loved to have included workforce in the “good faith discussions” she’s been having with government over the last few months about the proposed and ongoing reforms for aged care.
While the previous day Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells said the government was “confident” and “hopeful” that bipartisan support of aged care funding reform would be reached very soon, Ms Ruston did not go there. Agreement on funding reform is one of the areas holding up the new aged care act legislation.
While she did not mention her expectations around the introduction of the act, she did reiterate her previous calls for a sector wide workforce plan.
“I understand that reforms are absolutely important, but no reform is going to be able to be delivered if you don’t have the workforce through which to deliver that reform.”
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