Peripheral vision needed

Aged care providers need to refocus their vision to account, not only for day-to-day services, but ‘other’ key responsibilities, writes Benetas CEO Sandra Hills.

 

CEO of Benetas, Sandra Hills

“You can’t see the forest for the trees”.

Often in the aged care sector, we get caught up in the day-to-day life of providing services – that is, ‘the trees’ are our priority. We focus on daily service provision; the immediate health needs of our clients; and the family who are standing in front of us, just as we should.

These are all vital activities for aged care provision, yet only focussing on the day-to-day causes us to lose sight of the wider forest and some of our other responsibilities as aged care providers.

Responsibilities such as building a sustainable environment and community that meets and promotes the needs of older people now and into the future.

A recent Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Opportunities for Participation of Victorian Seniors asked the question – how are we contributing to a positive ageing experience for the older Victorian population?

The recommendations in this report are relevant nation-wide, so before I lose those living and working in states and territories other than Victoria, the recommendations can be applied across all jurisdictions.  So stay with me!

A common sense approach

Benetas congratulates the Victorian Parliament for being gutsy enough to examine the barriers to older people’s participation socially, economically and within the community.

When barriers such as these are in place, often it is the common sense recommendations that break them down. Benetas supports the recommendations within the report for having a common sense approach.

One logical recommendation from the report is rethinking how we understand people in later life and celebrate their diversity. Not all older people are the same. A 65-year-old is going to have very different needs and requirements to a 100-year-old. This is logical.

Yet we still lump ‘older people’ all together in the same category. We need to be able to understand differences and the only way to do this is to get to know our older population.

What do people want? What are their individual needs? What makes a good day for someone?

The inquiry recommended addressing the current gaps in data collection, and supported the idea of a ‘clearinghouse’ in relation to ageing and participation.

The Productivity Commission also recommended in 2011 that a data ‘clearinghouse’ be implemented to facilitate access to aged care data. Time and again, the need to have better data and access to this data keeps coming up. Expanding on our evidence-base relating to age and ageing can only be a positive thing for our ageing population. Yet the Living Longer. Living Better reforms haven’t picked up on this area at all. Therefore it falls to the states and territories to investigate it themselves.

Cooperation on every level

By learning and knowing more about our older population, we can advocate on their behalf. In 2008, Noeline Brown was appointed the first Ambassador for Ageing by the federal Department of Health and Ageing.

Ms Brown has been an incredible advocate for older people – promoting positive ageing and respect. The Victorian Parliamentary inquiry recommends strengthening her position, by appointing a lead minister for older people to establish a central lead agency.

The Commissioner for Older People would be responsible for the development and implementation of a whole of government strategy that maximises opportunities for participation in later life.

The strategy includes empowering people in later life through implementing a range of activities older people can participate in. This would very likely impact the way aged care organisations provide services. We will have to engage more with our local communities and find innovative ways of tapping into these networks to provide more opportunities for our clients. We must find ways to provide our clients, living in both aged care facilities and their own homes, access to the information, activities and learnings of their choice.

Ensuring people feel included and involved must become a core function of both aged care providers and local councils.

Changing the focus of local communities to concentrate more on older people’s needs is not an easy task. The perception of older people by the general public is still, in the main, very negative.

I feel like a broken record, but we need to challenge media portrayals of ageing. This can be done through initiatives like programs that promote and improve intergenerational relationships or encourage compliance with anti discrimination legislation, or through initiatives such as the ‘Can’t do it without you’ image campaign from early 2012.

Until we change the negative perceptions of ageing in the public eye, we won’t ever be able to achieve real and lasting change for older people.

Like with all plans – there comes challenges and the first steps are the most important. Now that the Victorian Parliament has identified the issues, we need the industry and government to work together to address these issues and provide pathways for older people to feel included.

We need other states and territories to undertake their own inquiries, or use the information from the Victorian Parliament to respond to the diverse and wide-ranging needs and issues of all Australians.

Most importantly, the federal government needs to relook at the Living Longer. Living Better reforms and include strategies for positive ageing to truly make a difference.

We need to keep in mind that even though the ‘trees’ are our priority, as service providers we must keep the forest in our sights.

Sandra Hills
CEO of Benetas  

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Tags: ambassador, benetas, commissioner, department-of-health-and-ageing, living-longer-living-better, noeline-brown, opportunities-for-participation-of-victoria, sandra-hills, victorian-parliament,

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