The Aged and Community Care Providers Association (ACCPA) welcomes the release of the Government’s Aged Care Taskforce Final Report, which puts forward an ambitious blueprint for our sector to ensure we will be able to provide services for older Australians now and into the future.
Half of residential aged care providers cannot make ends meet and are currently losing money on each and every resident. The viability of home care is also trending down, with providers barely keeping their heads above water.
The situation is even worse in regional and rural areas.
As the population ages, demand for aged care is set to spiral – placing enormous pressure on the sector and Australian taxpayers.
“Chronic underfunding of aged care goes back decades, and has made the sector unsustainable,” said ACCPA CEO Tom Symondson.
“Aged care in Australia cannot continue to muddle along with band-aid solutions while the system crumbles. We need a sector that’s set up to improve the lives of older Australians now and into the future. They deserve better, and the recommendations of the Taskforce will help deliver that.”
Under the recommendations, the Government would remain the primary funder of aged care, but people receiving services, and who can afford to, would be asked to contribute more towards the cost of things they have typically paid for their whole lives. Things like accommodation, living expenses and some home care services. A strong safety net would continue to be in place to ensure nobody misses out on critical services if they cannot afford to contribute.
“Every Australian should have access to high-quality aged care, regardless of their location, income or financial means. Crucially, the Taskforce recommended that increased contributions should not be required for the care people receive, such as from personal care workers and nurses. Just as these types of services are free or heavily subsidised for Australians of all ages in our healthcare or disability systems, so they should be in aged care,“ Mr Symondson said.
“For too long, we have dodged the hard question of how to ensure aged care not just survives, but flourishes into the future. As providers have struggled through one challenge after another, from bushfires to COVID-19, whilst often losing millions of dollars per year, it has become crystal clear that we no longer have the luxury of kicking this issue into the long grass”
Mr Symondson said providers needed more predictable funding, as recommended by the Taskforce, to be able to invest in the high quality services Australian’s expect.
“With our sector losing billions of dollars over the past five years, there has been almost no investment in growing our services to cater for the increasing numbers of people who need them. Lenders won’t lend money to providers to fix these problems because they can’t afford to pay back those loans, creating a vicious cycle.”
The Taskforce has ruled out a specific tax or levy on all working Australians, which was originally recommended by the Aged Care Royal Commission, opting for a means tested user pays model with a strong safety net to ensure nobody is disadvantaged.
“The unavoidable truth is that aged care needs far greater investment to deliver the services the Royal Commission challenged us to provide, and that community expects. The hardest question is how to balance the fairness of asking older Australians with financial means to make a greater financial contribution to their own care, against the fairness of asking a shrinking percentage of working-age Australians, who already fund the vast majority of the aged care system through their taxes, to shoulder an even greater burden.”
“Older Australians are demanding and deserve higher levels of care and we need to be able to provide it for them.”
