The sector will need to engage with the community, Government, Treasury, bureaucrats and the banks and take them on a journey towards accepting that user pays should be part of the system – and providers will need to take action now to ensure the strategy’s success, according to former Howard media adviser and PR guru Adam Connolly.
The CEO of the Sydney-based crisis and reputation management firm Apollo Communications, Adam Connolly was working as a media adviser to Prime Minister John Howard in 1997 when the Government tried to introduce user pays to the aged care system – resulting in a scare campaign that saw the plan ultimately fail.
“We tried to introduce a solution to a problem the wider community didn’t realise existed,” recalls Adam.
“Of course we absolutely lost the argument when older Australians thought that we were taking their grandmother’s home away from her. As a result, that was very quickly put on the back burner, and instead we have had 20 years of policy adjustments that have tried to go anywhere but user pays.”
To get user pays off the ground today will require framing the problem first – and then engaging with the various stakeholders over the longer term, says Adam, who also sits on the board of UnitingCare Australia.
“We have to be very careful about going straight to the solution, without first explaining the challenge of providing equitable service levels in aged care when there are justifiable limits to how far taxpayers’ funding can go.”
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Hear Adam speak live at the LEADERS SUMMIT, Thursday 24 March and Friday 25 March, in Sydney. Register HERE.
