ABC’s Lateline runs another damming aged care segment

Last Tuesday night’s Lateline ran its sixth investigation in 12 months on aged care in Australia – all of them highlighting the “pattern of failure” to adequately care for the elderly. They stated that they have received over 100 detailed cases of elder abuse. Three senior care providors were interviewed. The major points raised, with case examples, were:
• Lack of dignified and compassionate care
• Due to not enough staff – staff ratios
• Inexperienced/low qualification staff required to carry out complex nursing functions
• Leading to “death being hastened and more unpleasant than we would want”
• Incident reports and major system failures ignored by management
In response ACSA CEO Adj Prof John G Kelly expressed his concern with the issues raised but reiterated that the vast majority of nursing homes provide very good standards of care.
“I sympathise with the residents and families touched by these incidents, but the public needs to be reassured the great majority of aged care residents and those receiving community care are satisfied with the quality of their care. What we need to acknowledge though is that there is chronic underfunding, a great deal of stress and too much paperwork that takes carers and nurses away from caring from their residents and clients”.
“The Federal Government recently implemented the Living Longer Living Better aged care…introduces a strengthened complaints system” he said. “In addition, the new My Aged Care website (www.myagedcare.gov.au) contains details of every nursing home in Australia including reports by the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency”.
The major point is that Lateline has chosen to review (a sample) of the outcomes, not the cause(s), which is predominantly funding not matching costs to provide the level of care it states is desirable, or indeed required.
John Kelly makes the interesting footnote in his response that it is vital that the next government makes the Ageing portfolio a Cabinet position, so that the aged care gets the priority it deserves. In the eleven years of the Howard government there were nine Ministers for Ageing, the last being Christopher Pyne, who has stated that it was the most junior ministry in the Government.