industry & reform
Overcharging and underdelivering?
Royal commission witnesses
claim some providers are not
behaving ethically.
By Conor Burke
I
n its second hearing in Adelaide,
the royal commission heard witness
testimony from home care recipient
Josef Rack.
He told the commission about his
seven years of frustrating home care with
Southern Cross Care, in which he claimed
he was overcharged and ignored.
He tendered evidence to show that he
was charged $536.60 monthly to receive
92 hours of RN contact per year, only to tell
the commission that over the seven-year
period he was with Southern Cross, he only
saw an RN for approximately 20 hours.
He also told the court of his frustration at
the number of different carers who came
through his doors and that sometimes they
weren’t even identifiable as Southern Cross
employees – with no ID or uniform.
When Rack moved to Assist HomeCare
“because of the high cost of the charges” at
Southern Care, he again struggled with the
administration and its cost transparency.
Unable to procure a statement from
the provider for nearly a year, Rack was
eventually contacted by the government.
“I said, ‘Look, I [do not agree] with that
sum. We better have a talk,’ and he never
came to the party to talk. And in the
meantime, I also received a letter from the
aged care department saying that Assist
HomeCare is no longer allowed to employ
new home care packages,” he said.
Rack now receives care from HenderCare
and manages services himself.
In response, Southern Care representatives
say Rack is mistaken, as RNs are often
referred to in communications as their
“wellbeing partner”. So, he may in fact have
been seeing RNs.
Also featured were four personal care
workers. They told the commission
of the dangers of working alone in
unfamiliar areas.
They also spoke of underemployment.
One witness told the commission that
“apparently, they don’t have enough
work, yet they keep on employing
more people”.
“I only work three days a week, and
they say they don’t have enough work
for three days of 7.5 hours, minus the
meal break, of work for me. And I’m
thinking to myself, ‘If they don’t have
enough work for a part-time employee
that works three days a week, how are
the full-time employees getting work?’”
When another witness was asked
how the sector could attract people to
aged care jobs, the worker had a simple
response: “The two things are wages
and training.”
The following day, legally blind aged
care recipient Marie Dowling spoke of the
desperation she felt when dealing with My
Aged Care. Dowling, who has no family
in Australia, described her “anguish and
desperation”.
After struggling for a year to be helped,
including asking for papers in a size and
font she could read, and a trip to her local
MP, Adam Bandt, Dowling was offered a
home care package.
“Look, I felt absolutely at a loss and,
being unable initially to find help, it was so
stressful. And I really felt … depersonalised,
worthless, unable of course to organise my
own care, and I really felt demoralised by
the entire process. And I think it is not fit for
purpose,” she said.
“My message to the royal commission
is that a review [should] be held into
the engagement of disabled persons in
My Aged Care.”
The commission also heard from
more unnamed witnesses. The
witnesses, small business people, told
the commission of the difficulties they
face when interacting with the Aged Care
Quality & Safety Commission, recalling the
adversarial nature of their dealings with
the agency, leaving one carer and business
person “traumatised”.
They also described being referred to
consultants in order to meet standards and
being charged exorbitant fees.
Mary Patetsos, from the Federation
of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of
Australia, told the commission of the need
to ensure that CALD aged care residents
and recipients receive attention at this
commission.
This group, she said, is often an
afterthought, and as they age, ethnically
diverse people can experience isolation
as they lose language skills.
“One of the key concerns I have in
my work with the healthcare system –
and it is the same in aged care – is that
often consumer research into the needs
of older people excludes people from
CALD backgrounds. It is more expensive
for a researcher to research someone
with an interpreter than without,”
she said.
Royal commission hearings are open
to the public, and will be streamed on
the government’s Royal Commission into
Aged Care Quality and Safety website. ■
agedcareinsite.com.au
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