Home care providers make joint call for action

No older person should be made to choose between dignity and dinner, chief executive officers from seven home care organisations have said in a joint call to government to act on the Support at Home funding model.

The group of providers including Your Side Australia, Hornsby Kuringai and Central Coast Community Transport, Proveda, Focus Care, Novacare, MWP Care and Job Quest – who collectively hold over 160 years of frontline experience – have warned that unless urgent action is taken, older Australians will be put at risk by an underfunded system that prioritises cost over care.

In their call to government Danielle Ballantine of Your Side Australia, Helen Crouch of Hornsby Kuringai and Central Coast Community Transport, Kaz Dawson of Proveda, Christine Harlamb of Focus Care, Joseph McCarthy of Novacare, Matthew Adderton of MWP Care and Ka Chan of Job Quest provide a case study of a full pensioner assessed by Services Australia and how the funding model would impact them.

Looking at the above case study, despite a person being assessed as needing more than $1000 worth of services, they could still be required to pay more than $100 a week out-of-pocket – which can be more than 20 per cent of the weekly income for someone on the pension age.

Ms Dawson said she and her counterparts in this group were becoming increasingly aware that many providers shared the same concerns – and they were not always being represented or acknowledged.

“This is particularly true for small to medium-sized care providers and those with more innovative or non-traditional service delivery models. Collectively, we got together and wanted to ensure our voices and the voices of those we serve are heard in the conversations shaping the future of aged care,” she told Community Care Review.

The group of providers also raised concern about how the transactional funding model has reduced care to units of service – overlooking the role human connection and reducing care to fleeting moments of impersonal care.

The providers have called for the government to:

• remove financial barriers and review the co-contribution model to ensure vulnerable people are not priced out of essential care and count personal care as a clinical service – making it fully funded and accessible to all
• restore adequate care management funding by lifting the cap from 10 per cent to at least 17 per cent, so it reflects the critical role care managers play in delivering safe, tailored and compassionate support.

Without government action, providers said irreversible but preventable harm may be done, including falls, infections, deteriorating health, premature access to residential care or hospital and elder abuse may go undetected, ultimately seeing the system fail those it is meant to protect.

“SaH represents comprehensive and broad reaching reform, and there is still so much uncertainty, so it’s impossible to identify a single biggest concern. Having said that, our overall concern is that, in its current form, the SaH funding model and timeline will result in increased risks to the safety, health and financial wellbeing of older Australians, and the instability and unsustainability of providers,” Ms Dawson told CCR.