The consumer advocacy peak is continuing its drive for increased home care funding, calling on next Tuesday’s Budget to ensure no older Australian waits more than 30 days for a Home Care Package (HCP) by funding an extra 60,000 packages – around one-third of the number currently available in the system.
The Safer at Home campaign says of the 100,000 people on the home care wait list, around 19,000 each year are forced to enter residential while over 10,000 die waiting for their package.
“In addition, at least 20 per cent of older Australians already in residential aged care during this pandemic don’t need to be there. That’s 50,000 people that can’t remain safer at home because the system has let them down, and let their families down,” CEO Ian Yates said.
Mr Yates added the Aged Care Royal Commission’s COVID-19 report had exposed critical failures by some aged care providers to provide care and quality of life for older Australians during the pandemic.
Speaking on Today yesterday, the CEO said while urgent funding was needed in Tuesday’s Budget to bring the home care waiting list down, more would be needed in 2021.
“Next year’s budget we are talking many billions of dollars to bring this aged care system up to scratch, and to change the regulations in aged care, because this report doesn’t deal with that,” he said.
“That allowed poor providers to continue to operate. It is time we reward and support the good providers and get the poor ones out of the industry.”
