industry & reform
Five stars
Patricia Sparrow is the CEO of COTA , a leading the peak body for older Australians .
COTA chief speaks on Star Rating System .
By Elise Hartevelt
Providers are calling on the government to scrap the new Star Rating System , saying the current assessment reflects historic non-compliances and doesn ’ t consider how aged care is funded .
The Star Rating System in My Aged Care came into force last December and scores providers one out of five stars based on their quality of service , staffing levels , compliance and resident interviews .
Nearly 60 per cent of Australia ’ s aged care homes received a minimum of three stars , indicating they provide ‘ acceptable ’ levels of care .
Just one per cent of the 2,671 homes were awarded five stars .
Council on the Ageing ( COTA ) chief Patricia Sparrow agreed its critical information is up-to-date but also highlighted that any new system is likely to come with teething problems .
“ We acknowledge that any system is not going to be perfect , but that doesn ’ t mean that it isn ’ t useful to have this information out there ,” Sparrow said .
“ It shows there ’ s still a lot of room for improvement in aged care .”
Join Aged Care Insite in a conversation with Sparrow about COTA ’ s plans for 2023 and other challenges the industry will face this year .
ACI : You were appointed as COTA ’ s new Chief Executive in October last year . How has the start of the year been for the organisation ? PS : It ’ s been amazing , I ’ m really honoured to take on the role . It ’ s really important that older Australians get well supported , and are seen positively as a key part of Australian community and society . And , of course , COTA deals with aged care , but deals with a whole range of other issues , and so the thing that I ’ ve really been struck by , which I guess I knew beforehand but really struck since I ’ ve been in the role is the level of ageism there is in the community , and how that underpins a range of things that we see happening to older Australians , and that a lot of that ageism is actually internalised for all of us in terms of how we see older people . So , that ’ s a really interesting and challenging one for me , and we see it in aged care , and we see it in health , and we see it in a whole range of areas where you could look at ageism as being a key frame and in some of the decisions that are made , some of the things that older people are seen to be able to do or not do , and even in some of the decisions we make for ourselves about not wanting to look older or be older , so that ’ s a really interesting area for me that I think COTA will be doing a lot of work on .
Can you tell us a bit more about the work COTA has planned ? We ’ ve looked at things like mature age employment , for example , how do we shift attitudes , and that something like one in three recruitment managers have said they wouldn ’ t employ someone over 50 , which is a lot of us , so how do we shift those attitudes ?
But also things like barriers that prevent employers , so workers ’ compensation for example , has some hard age limits on it in different states , how do we make sure those barriers are removed ? So that ’ s an example of the kind of work in ageism that ’ s in the employment space , which is also relevant in aged care in terms of , where is the workforce going to come from and whether we can get more older people working in aged care .
In terms of aged care , some of the priorities over the next 12 months for us is firstly that we want to see reform continue , and we want the momentum of reform to continue .
And I know there ’ s a lot happening , but so much did come out of the Royal Commission , and older people , and I think the community generally want to see a lot of those changes in place as quickly as possible . We know we have to make sure that we can achieve those changes , but we want to see the momentum kept up , so that ’ s going to clearly be a priority . And then for us , there are some specific areas of focus , one of them being home care , which , of course , we know most other people want to stay living at home , residential care is really important , but more and more people
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