‘How did we get here? How did a nation who protested so vigorously against the cancellation of ANZAC Day marches to honour our Diggers end up putting those Diggers, and others, in the kind of situations described in the recent report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care? How did we lose our way so much that our most vulnerable citizens are not fed properly, not helped to stay clean and dry and comfortable, are restrained physically and chemically, all dignity stripped from them?’
The recently released report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care does not hold back in describing a situation that should be abhorrent to us all. As the report notes, ‘substandard care and abuse pervades the Australian aged care system’. The Commission reports on wide ranging abuse in residential aged care, including restrictive practices, complex care needs not met, particularly in the areas of dementia care and palliative care, lack of even the most basic care of showering, cleaning teeth, good food, supportive toileting and meaningful interaction with others. The report comments on the difficulty of discovering the extent of substandard care and uncovering a culture of reluctance to determine quality of care.
It would be easy to blame individual carers or care providers for the individual incidents of abuse and neglect, but that would be a disservice to the many dedicated personal care workers in the aged care industry who deliver whatever care they can as compassionately as possible under impossible circumstances of under-resourcing, understaffing and minimal training. The problems in the industry are systemic in nature and start at high levels — the report identifies the Australian government and its Minister responsible for the aged care portfolio.
Consecutive governments have continued to strip funding from the Aged Care budget, with no recognition of the rising needs of increasing numbers of older old Australians with complex health care needs who need more than the very basic care being funded. Modern medicine has solved so many causes of ill health and early death that significant numbers of people live well into a much older age and can do so with significant co-morbidities which would have killed them in earlier generations, and this has now created unintended consequences for the larger number of frailer, sicker older adults needing specialised care that also requires significant funding.
Underfunding in the aged care sector and a shift in focus from care to profit has contributed