Update from Family Aged Care Advocates
Care at home is the government's primary answer to the question of delivering age-related care to a significantly increasing demographic.
However, we know based on our experiences helping families and older people that while the theory is a sound one the reality is quite different.
Now we have the Older Person’s Advocacy Network (OPAN) which analysed data based on their experiences dealing with almost 40,000 advocacy cases during 2022-23.
Their report highlighted communication issues as a key problem for people receiving aged care – they are feeling dismissed, ignored and not listened to.
There were numerous cases where a person had concerns and made multiple attempts to address these concerns with their provider with no success — they left messages but these often went unanswered.
Other issues include home care providers:
failing to contact the client when there has been a change to their service time or scheduled care-worker
listening or responding to the client’s express needs
following through on actions they had agreed to with the client
communicating or consulting the client on changes to their care plan in a clear and transparent manner.
The report also identifies a lack of choice and control as a top issue for people in home care settings. People were unhappy that they “were simply not consulted or included in decisions relating to their care in their own home".
Home care clients also reported being unhappy with their provider but were unsure of alternative options available to them.
StewartBrown’s Aged Care Financial Performance Survey Report analysed data from 71,269 home care packages. The report stated that the average number of care hours for people on a home care package was just over 5 hours a week and unspent funds have increased to an average of $12,604 for every care recipient. In total, unspent funds are now in excess of $2.9 billion. Ironically, it seems the government is contributing to this problem inadvertently, by now enforcing a lengthy list of exclusions and requiring an increased level of compliance from organisations to demonstrate that the money is being spent appropriately. Which tends to lend itself to a lot of ‘no’ when it comes to package requests.
Is that good enough? We think not. We offer a home care coordination service that aims to address these problems mentioned above. If you're interested in finding out more, just give us a call on 0411 264 002.
How Family Aged Care Advocates work
FACA provides guidance and support to help families identify the relevant options to help you make informed decisions to get the best care outcomes for the people you love and care for most. They're independent aged care specialists only interested in the right outcomes for your family … that’s all that matters and there’s no trade-off with that.