Senator Richard Colbeck has revealed the Federal Government will commit $10.6 million in the 2020-21 Budget for a national network of system coordinators to meet a target of no people under the age of 45 living in residential aged care by 2022.
Speaking alongside National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister Stuart Robert, Mr Colbeck said Tuesday’s Budget announcements will include funding for 40 coordinators to help find accommodation and support in the community for the almost 5,000 people under 65 living in residential care.
The Government had released its Younger People in Residential Aged Care (YPIRAC) Strategy to move younger people out of residential care in March 2019, but the plan was criticised in the Royal Commission’s Interim Report last October, which labelled the previous targets as “modest” and lacking “ambition”.
The Strategy was then updated in November 2019 to target, apart from in exceptional circumstances:
- no people under the age of 65 entering residential aged care by 2022;
- no people under the age of 45 living in residential aged care by 2022; and
- no people under the age of 65 living in residential aged care by 2025.
The Government also threw another $4.7 million towards this effort.
There is a question mark however over how well the Strategy has worked so far – and how far this new funding will stretch.
According to the Ministers, since the launch of the strategy to 30 June 2020, there has been a 39% drop in the number of younger people entering residential care (from 407 to 247).
There has also been a 22% fall in people under the age of 45 living in residential care from 167 to 130, and a 15% fall in people under the age of 65 living in residential aged care from 5,715 to 4,860.
How many of those people actually left though?
We suspect many simply turned 65 and ‘aged out’ of the system.
$10 million for coordinators also seems unlikely to lead to a considerable drop in the numbers.
As we covered last year in The Daily COMMISSION, the Department of Health witnesses at the Royal Commission’s hearing into the issue estimated it would take around $700 million to $800 million a year to move all 6,000 younger people in residential care into the community based on the average package costs of $132,000 per year for NDIS participants.
Not all younger people with a disability qualify for the NDIS – if they don’t meet the criteria, how then they will fund their move back into the community?
