As aged care firms as a key election battleground, thousands are still dying each year waiting for home care packages
Laurena Henschke had been dead about 12 months when a letter from the Australian government turned up at her Adelaide home.“You have moved up in the queue and I expect that you will be assigned a home care package in about three months. This package may be lower than the level you are approved for, but it lets you start to receive some home care services.”
“You’ve got to have round the clock staffing, alarms, bed rails and all that sort of thing to cope. But we got by, we bought an electric bed and slept in the room with her, and we saw her into the next life, or off the planet, at home, which was a great blessing.
It’s an issue that was flagged in no uncertain terms by the royal commission. In its final report last year, the royal commission said it was “not confident that there is adequate capacity to supply all the services that should be funded under a needs-based system”.“It will be necessary for supply-side capacity to be assessed and, where necessary, grown, so that aged care services are available when and where they are needed,” its report said. “This requires detailed planning.
“Providers report to LASA that they continue to face severe staffing challenges due to the pandemic, so it is difficult to see where these workers are coming from,” Rooney told the Guardian. Yet the current pension arrangements effectively punish pensioners who want to take up caring work for family or loved ones.
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