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Yet more evidence to support calls for reform to Aged Care |
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UnitingCare Australia issued a media release the recent Four Corners report into Aged Care:
UNITINGCARE AUSTRALIA MEDIA RELEASE
02 June 2009
YET MORE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT
CALLS TO REFORM AGED CARE
Last night’s Four Corners report on aged care has highlighted once again the need for the Minister and her Department to direct their attention to enabling a high quality of care for older people.
UnitingCare National Director Lin Hatfield Dodds said, “Older people and their families need their Government to care about how well they are looked after in a time of need. They are utterly frustrated that their concerns about care are being ignored in favour of checking that agencies have piles of the right paperwork completed.”
The program drew attention to the seriously flawed complaints investigation mechanisms now in place.
“When older people or their families complain that they are not being cared for adequately, we need a complaints resolution system that tells us how substantive the problems are and how they are being addressed, and gives evidence that the services have been improved. It is patently inadequate to be told that the Department has investigated and found that the paperwork, systems and processes are in place”, said Ms Hatfield Dodds.
“We need a complaints, accreditation and regulatory system that promotes quality and leads to problems being fixed.”
The Four Corners report comes on top of the 29 April report of the Senate Inquiry into Residential and Community Aged Care in Australia. That Inquiry, conducted by the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration, called for sweeping changes including an all-encompassing review of the sector using a client-based approach.
Ms Hatfield Dodds said, “It is time that the Minister and the Department of Health and Ageing worked with all stakeholders to radically reform a care system that is in crisis and unable to give older people the standard of care they could reasonably expect. These reforms should have the needs of the person foremost in mind, so that our older citizens have choices available and can live healthy lives within supportive communities. The Government has shown a welcome appetite for reform in other social service areas such as housing and financial health and wellbeing, and it is vital that the Government’s reform agenda take in aged care too. We now need action and we stand ready to work closely with the Minister and the Department to implement fundamental systemic changes.”
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You can download the full Media Release here.
Information on the Senate Inquiry is available here.
For recent media coverage of the aged care crisis in Australia, see the Four Corners program “End of the Line” here, as well as the last two editions of the ABC’s National Interest radio program: 29 May and 22 May.
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