industry & reform
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg delivering
the 2019 budget. Source: SBS
The value of unpaid care
Budget 2019 fails to take into
account how important carers
are to our communities.
By Michael Fine
J
osh Frydenberg’s first (and possibly
last) budget has generally been
greeted with disappointment by the
aged care industry, as ACI has reported
elsewhere in some detail.
One budget item the treasurer raised,
however, gave me some reason for
excitement. It was the announcement
that an additional $84.3 million is to be
provided for carers over the coming
four years.
That’s not much each year. I calculated
just over $2 million per annum on average
for each state and territory. But at least
there was an attempt to recognise the
fundamental work of carers in the delivery
of aged care.
It turns out, however, that the newly
announced expenditure was simply filling
out a budget item that had already been
announced in the budget last year by the
then treasurer, Scott Morrison.
The extra funding is intended to enable
the number of ‘financial packages’ available
to carers to expand from 3000 to around
5000 per year. At least 25 per cent of the
total is intended for young carers, that is,
those aged 25 or less. These packages are
a core part of the Integrated Carer Support
Service (ICSS) program that has been
promised for several years.
When finally implemented, the ICSS
is supposed to provide new online
counselling, coaching and peer support
services as well as educational material
and direct services across 16 regions. We
continue to wait to see what, if anything,
will be delivered.
Meanwhile, the packages, worth up
to $3000 per recipient, are intended to
cover the costs associated with a carer’s
education, employment, travel and
opportunities to take a break from the
provision of daily care.
The most recent survey of carers
by the ABS (2015) found that there
are approximately 2.7 million carers in
Australia. About 856,000 of these (32 per
cent of all carers) are the primary carer of
someone with disability or who requires
care as a result of ageing.
If we assume that the packages are to
help primary carers, most will miss out.
There are only enough packages to help
around 11 carers in every 2000. Expressed
more conventionally, about 0.55 per cent
of the potential target group will be eligible.
Of course, income support
arrangements through the Carer Payment
(previously Carer Pension) and Carer
Allowance continue. Yes, they will receive
the Energy Assistance Payment of $75
available for single people ($62.50 per
person for couples) to help them through
the next year. That’s a handy extra amount
of almost $1.50 a week for some, not
enough to pay for a cup of coffee, but it
may buy them 10 or 25 minutes in front of
the radiator on a cold winter’s night.
However, for the recipients of these
payments, as well as the majority of carers
who are not eligible for public income
support, other problems continue. One is
the long-term financial effects of providing
care, expressed as a loss of earnings and an
incapacity to save.
Foremost among these, from the
perspective of the budget, is that carers
have been removed from the aged care and
disability programs and made subject to
specialised services targeted at them. This
has been sold as a significant development
in carers’ rights. Carers, it is claimed, no
longer have to be helped out of the aged
care or disability programs, but have come
to be recognised on their own merits.
The problem is that care is not just
about individual needs. It is essentially part
of a close personal relationship in which
support is provided on an ongoing basis.
Carers do not need help as a result of
some pathology or unmet need of their
own. Their needs arise from the importance
of being there for the person they help.
Increasingly, the difficulties faced by
carers arise from the need for someone to
take responsibility for the complex financial
details found in current care plans while
managing the inevitable staff problems and
schedules that arise in this time of CDC
packages and NDIS budgets.
Yet services have been redesigned to
make them even less visible than they were
10 or 20 years ago.
According to a recent report by Deloitte
(2015), carers provide around 1.9 billion
hours of unpaid assistance every year.
This has an economic value of well over
$60 billion per year, much more than the
combined costs of aged care and the NDIS.
Next time a treasurer delivers the
Australian budget, it might be worth
thinking a little more about the value
of unpaid care and its significance as a
fundamental social relationship on which
our communities are built. ■
Michael Fine is honorary professor
in the Department of Sociology at
Macquarie University.
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