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Keywords: Aged Care

  • The insights of Pope Francis in shaping Catholic health and aged care

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 August 2015
    7 Comments

    When addressing Italian doctors last November, Pope Francis quoted St. Camillus de Lellis who suggested that the most effective method in caring for the sick was simply to 'Put more heart into those hands.' Let's do something to change the market settings and political settings here in Australia to modify the behaviour of all Australians in the future, and let's attend to our own Franciscan interior ecological conversion with our care for the vulnerable.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Neoliberal economics can't care for the disadvantaged

    • Paul Jensen
    • 22 May 2015
    9 Comments

    Neoliberal economics underlies the recent Federal Budget and the major parties’ welfare policies. It proclaims the end of the age of entitlement and speaks of small government, as it embraces the privatisation of 'service delivery'. Faith based organisations are involved as agencies of the government, often forced to impose punitive measures rather than the promise of the 'carrot' that is their purpose. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Planning for a good death

    • Michele Gierck
    • 26 May 2014
    9 Comments

    The ambulance has brought my 88-year-old mother to the Accident and Emergency ward at the local public hospital. In answering the doctor's question about resuscitation, I'm so thankful that my mother's wishes have been made clear, and documented by her general practitioner, by means of an Advance Health Directive.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Homeless young people need the means to flourish

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 April 2014
    13 Comments

    Curing homelessness is not simply a matter of finding homes for disadvantaged people. With backgrounds of family dysfunction, broken schooling, physical and mental illness and addiction, homeless young people come to the attention of many government departments. For all the good will involved, the effect of piecemeal interventions is to confuse young people who feel themselves the object of care, not the subject of their own growth.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My accidental apathy

    • Megan Graham
    • 16 October 2013
    10 Comments

    Christian activist and author Shane Claiborne wrote that the real tragedy of poverty is not that we do not care about the poor, but that we do not know the poor. As my memories of particular brushes with people living in poverty fade, feelings of empathy begin to lose their potency; a natural attrition when their reality, so distant from my own, is so lost among the 'First World Problems' of my inner city life.

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  • RELIGION

    Aged care and the business of gift

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 May 2013
    9 Comments

    In our care of the aged, not only their health and security are at stake but also their self-respect and dignity. It is impossible not to sympathise with the argument that the high skills this requires from carers should be better remunerated. But in the business of business and remuneration, love is the skill that dares not speak its name.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aged care dirty work done dirt cheap

    • Michael Mullins
    • 29 April 2013
    25 Comments

    Wage increases for aged care workers should not be allowed to become yet another laudable but failed Gillard Government initiative that an incoming Coalition government refuses to countenance because of its stated commitment to fiscal responsibility. The dignity of older Australians is not expendable.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rupert Murdoch an example for older Australians

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 April 2012
    20 Comments

    There is a lot not to admire about the business practices of Rupert Murdoch, but he stands tall as an elder who is able to maintain his stature in the face of great challenge. The Federal Government's new aged care blueprint has the potential to ensure that more Australians will retain their dignity in old age.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Alzheimer's erosion

    • Vin Maskell
    • 12 October 2011
    9 Comments

    'I've been looking after Vera since 1996. I wasn't going to stop because of glandular fever.' Clyde and I talk sport and the weather but Vera's always on his mind. 'Her memory's gone. I only ask her one question each day. I say, Who's your best mate? And she looks at me as if I'm stupid!' 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Elders' wisdom could save us

    • Michael Mullins
    • 08 August 2011
    10 Comments

    We could be facing a new GFC because many decisions on the financial markets are made by financial traders in their 20s who are uninterested in learning from past experiences. Youth may be the future, but there will be no future without the wisdom of our elders.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The future shock of aged care

    • Martin Laverty
    • 07 February 2011
    8 Comments

    One of our most daunting challenges is how to look after the baby boomers, who are fast approaching old age. The cost of aged care, and the number needing it, is skyrocketing. Funding has not been committed, and there's a train wreck in sight. Doing nothing is not an option. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Natural disaster fund could be Gillard's easy path to glory

    • Michael Mullins
    • 31 January 2011
    5 Comments

    It is difficult for Prime Ministers to impose short term pain for long term gain if they want to be re-elected. But Gillard faces a different situation because the Independents are her masters, not the 2013 voters.

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