Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) has endorsed the National Cabinet’s move to provide additional aged care support in the form of the Aged Care Advisory Group.
“Aged care is our biggest vulnerability in the fight against COVID-19 and it is good to see the announcement of further measures to protect older Australians in care,” said LASA CEO Sean Rooney.
Mr Rooney welcomed the announcement of additional $171.5 million investment in aged care, but said more detail on how this funding will be spent is required.
He also welcomed the idea of establishing Aged Care Response Centres in all states and territories.
“These centres will be important in the fight,” he said. “We recommended these centres need to play a key role in translating national policy and guidance into state and local planning and practice.”
“This means they will need to plan for outbreaks, stress test these strategies and be the single point of coordination in response to actual outbreaks.”
“This includes having in place appropriate systems and processes to manage hospital transfers, surge workforce availability, and Personal Protective Equipment access and disposal.”
