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People Care director Arthur Miller outside the royal
commission in Brisbane. Photo: Darren England, AAP
Commission rundown
Hearings bring focus to remote
and rural access to care.
By Conor Burke
MILDURA: ‘MAYBE I JUST END IT’
“I just cried silently all the way home so
Don couldn’t see. And I just thought, ‘Well,
maybe I just end it for both of us’,” said
Rosemary Cameron, describing a low point
she experienced as an informal carer.
Cameron, 69, cares for her husband
Don, who is living with Lewy body
dementia, and she was one of many carers
who told the commission of the realities of
informal care in Australia.
As of 2015, almost 2.7 million Australians
identified themselves as informal and
unpaid carers – that’s 12 per cent of our
population. Of those, around 420,700 are
primary carers of people over the age of 65.
Females make up 68.1 per cent of all
primary carers, and this has a massive
impact on income and employment
opportunities for women. Deloitte Access
Economics estimated that carers provided
1.9 billion hours of care in 2015. This is
equivalent to each carer providing 673
hours per year or 13 hours per week.
Cameron, and others, spoke about the
difficulties in dealing with respite, loss of
earnings and the effects of all of this on
mental health.
BRISBANE: FALSE HAVEN
The commission also heard evidence from
the players involved in the closing of the
Earle Haven facility in Queensland.
The sudden closure left 68 residents
temporarily homeless, and during
testimony there was confusion, due to the
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agedcareinsite.com.au
complicated nature of the arrangement
between People Care and subcontractor
HelpStreet, as to who bears responsibility.
Further confusion reigned when the
question was asked why Earle Haven
was still able to operate after frequent
sanctions and who was responsible for
dealing with complaints, be it the Health
Department or the Aged Care Quality
and Safety Commission.
Also giving evidence was Professor Ron
Paterson from the University of Auckland.
He was damming in his assessment of
providers who “pay lip service” to resolving
instances of poor care and more so on
the lack of transparency surrounding
complaints and investigations in the sector.
“These are publicly funded providers,
and they are providers who are caring
for the most vulnerable members of our
community. Why would the default position
be secrecy of information about the
providers? That strikes me as odd,” he said.
BROOME: MAGGOTS FOUND IN
PATIENT’S MOUTH
Maggots were found in the mouth of a
respite patient at an aged care facility in
Broome and the incident was reported
anonymously to the aged care complaints
commissioner.
The Broome hearing of the Royal
Commission into Aged Care Quality and
Safety was told that one evening during
the wet season, flies entered the mouth
of the patient – who had a poor ability to
chew – and laid eggs, which produced
maggots. The commission was told that
the incubation period for maggots is
usually about eight hours.
The commission also heard from Martin
Laverty, chief executive of the Royal
Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). He told
the commission that the excuse of small
populations and workforce shortages is
not good enough to explain poor care to
remote communities.
“Medicare is one of this nation’s greatest
assets, but it does not serve the health
interests of remote Australians, and
because of the interdependence of primary
care access with aged care, we are letting
older Australians down by a failing primary
care system in remote Australia,” he said.
“Until we articulate an expectation as
to what is a reasonable standard of access
to primary care, in both volume of access
[and] quality of access, it is insufficient
to just have access to GPs without palliative
care, without geriatrics, without dental care
in remote Australia. And the commission
has an opportunity to articulate a
reasonable standard.”
Laverty told the commission that in the
opinion of the RFDS, there was insufficient
“prevention, primary and rehabilitation
healthcare access in many parts of rural
and remote Australia”.
He pointed to statistics that show remote
areas have half the coverage of doctors
compared with cities – with 459 per
100,000 people in cities compared with
225 per 100,000 people in remote areas.
The commission heard about the issues
specific to the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander community in Broome and
surrounding areas.
Lack of access to respite, poor cultural
safety and awareness in aged care facilities,
and staff turnover were recurring issues.
Leon Flicker from the University of
Western Australia told the commission
that although Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islanders make up 3 per cent of the
population, they only occupy 1 per cent
of aged care beds.
In his opinion, this could be due to
a number of reasons. The Aboriginal
population often develop age-related
syndromes at a younger age and therefore
aged care might not be appropriate.
Remoteness is another problem, as well
as a belief among the community that
residential care is not culturally safe as, in
his opinion, “racism is commonplace”.
Navigating My Aged Care is another
barrier to care, he said.
“It’s tortuous for a literate middle-class
Melburnian. It’s impossible for a remote
Aboriginal Kimberley person who may
not be literate, may not own a computer,
may not even own a landline or a mobile
phone … The idea that this is a system