royal commission
Aged & Community Services Australia
(ACSA) agrees that workforce levels need
to be addressed and said that the sector
will need additional resources to raise
overall numbers.
“ACSA supports a star rating system
in principle, provided it doesn’t create
a two‑tiered system,” said ACSA chief
executive Pat Sparrow.
“The proposed system includes a
range of staff and occupations and
acknowledges that residents have different
needs which require different levels of
support and skill combinations, which
will also better reflect and support the
increasing acuity of residents.”
ACSA said that were the aged care sector
to implement a star rating system, for
residents to receive at least a four-star level
of care would mean an increase of 37.2 per
cent in total staffing.
“ACSA strongly supports comments that
additional resourcing is required to achieve
this increase in staffing,” Sparrow said.
“What we know now is that aged care
simply isn’t funded to provide the level of
care people expect and deserve.
“A new direction like this could be exactly
what we need to force a rethink and set up
Australia for our ageing population and the
decades to come.”
Leading Aged Services Australia
(LASA) agreed that raising staff levels is
not possible in the current system, but
disagreed with the recommendation to
implement mandated minimum staffing
requirements, suggesting this may hinder
innovation in the sector.
“We agree with counsel assisting’s
observation that realising more staff in
aged care is not possible under the current including a reasonable financial margin, to
maintain viability.
“Achieving the best quality care is
paramount, and we note that more staff can
only be implemented with adequate funding.
“At the same time, we proposed in our
submission to the royal commission that
staffing numbers be aligned to ‘if not,
why not’ benchmarks that are a better
alternative to a mandated minimum
staff‑to-resident ratio. We believe this
approach warrants further attention.
“LASA supports increases in overall
staffing levels in aged care facilities,
and our sector tells us they want more
staff who are well-skilled and well-paid,”
Rooney said. “But we need more funding
to achieve this goal.”
In his concluding remarks, Rozen told
the commission that poor conditions of
employment, low staffing levels and poor
training is why the sector is struggling
with staff retention and attracting
future workers.
“Most workers are on minimum award
rates,” he said.
He quoted evidence given previously
by the ANMF’s Paul Gilbert, who said that
when it comes to staff numbers, it’s time
“to stop kicking the can down the road”.
“Commissioners, counsels assisting
agree with that observation,” Rozen said.
“We submit that if the goal of this royal
commission is to make recommendations
to achieve high quality, safe and
person‑centred aged care services, as
it must be under the terms of reference,
then the time for real action – on
staffing numbers and mix, skill levels,
remuneration, conditions of work and
registration of the unregulated portion of
the aged care workforce – is now.”
What we know now
is that aged care simply
isn’t funded to provide
the level of care people
expect and deserve. Tech and teaching constraints laid bare
funding system,” said LASA chief executive
Sean Rooney.
“The problem is that the average aged
care operator struggles to cover their
current costs at existing funding levels.
We have long advocated for funding
for good quality care to be linked to the
cost of delivering good quality care,
In mid-March, the royal commission
turned its attention to the role of research,
innovation and technology in aged care,
noting that those areas were vital for the
sector to meet the many challenges it
faced in the coming years.
Specifically, the workshops were about
investigating whether the sector and the
Australian government were doing enough
to foster “much needed” developments.
The royal commission heard from
Jennene Buckley, chief executive of Feros
Care, which has kept technology as a
centrepiece of its approach to care in
recent years. Buckley said technology is the
future but added that rolling it out across
residential aged care has been difficult.
“We need to make sure the funding
model and the pricing model of all aged
care services allows an organisation
to invest in technology and to invest in
Better wages, training
and regulation would also
improve the retention
and recruitment of the
beleaguered aged care
workforce.
quality,” she told the royal commission,
explaining that current funding models
don’t allow providers to innovate.
“[When] a piece of technology off the
shelf, that’s already been developed,
comes into our service, there is so much
work for a service provider to do to put that
innovation in the hands of a client.
“We need to test it. We need to make
sure we understand its limitations – the
risks around the technology, who it can
help, who it can’t help. Then we have to
develop assessment tools and guidelines
and training material.
“There’s a lot of work involved in just one
small piece of technology. So we need to
be able to create the ecosystem for that
technology to be evaluated, but then we
need funding and systems to be able to
allow providers to actually implement that
innovation. It’s not so simple.”
The following day, the royal commission
heard about teaching and research in
aged care, with researcher Dr Kate Barnett
comparing the aged care sector’s teaching
model with that of teaching hospitals,
calling it “the poor cousin”.
“It hasn’t had the kind of funding support
that the health sector model has had,”
Barnett explained.
“And that’s a pity, because there’s huge
scope, you know, if we want to break down
silos between health and aged care, and
particularly acute care, to have teaching
hospitals and teaching aged care services as
considered fairly equal players in the field of
educating current and future workforces.”
She added ageism is a factor in the
inequity.
“Why is it perfectly acceptable to have a
network of teaching hospitals, but for the
aged care sector it’s a bit of a luxury and
a bit of an add-on? Why isn’t it a central
part of an evidence-based quality system
of care?”
agedcareinsite.com.au
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