industry & reform you might be someone who works in a kitchen preparing food and you ’ re somehow not worth that additional money that the nurses , the personal care workers are worth , that will feel very wrong . And I think it is important to recognise that everybody who works in aged care has a valuable contribution to make , and we need to make sure that we ’ re paying them fairly and recognising that what they do matters .
How do you think providers will deal with this increase ? We know that providers on the whole are losing money . What that means is they ’ re receiving less money to deliver care than the care costs . So it ’ s older people that unfortunately miss out if we ’ re not receiving enough money to deliver the level of service that the community expects us to deliver . So the victim here is the older person . Seven out of 10
“ We know that providers on the whole are losing money . providers are losing money , on average $ 21 per resident per day , and that ’ s something like $ 750,000 a year for the average facility . You cannot continue to cover those kinds of losses . People who also provide home care , home care has been a little bit more sustainable in the past . But even home care now , we ’ re seeing most providers , if they can break even , they ’ re lucky . So the ability to cross-subsidise your residential care with the money you bring in from home care is diminishing rapidly .
So if we get pay rises awarded to our staff that are not then recognised in our funding , there just isn ’ t anything left in the pot . So it ’ s not about whether we want to or don ’ t want to ; we absolutely want to pay higher wages to our staff , but if there ’ s no money in the bank , there ’ s no money in the bank . So you end up having to make very tough decisions that we don ’ t want to have to make .
ACCPA chief Tom Symondson . Picture : Supplied .
I think the other thing is we ’ ve got to have a grown up national conversation about the actual cost of delivering aged care . And we have to start talking about whether consumers who can afford to contribute more are asked to do so . Just us constantly going back to the government and saying , “ You need to give us more money ,” is clearly not going to work . We have to really talk about whether the very low caps on consumer contributions for care are fair and reasonable . ■
We need registered and endorsed enrolled nurses like you to join our team of locums working in rural and remote Australia .
As a Rural LAP locum you will receive :
• hourly rate , as determined by State and Territory Government approved schedule ( s )
• superannuation , as determined by Federal Government regulations
• $ 150 per working day incentive allowance
( inclusive of super )
• $ 100 per day travel allowance
• travel and accommodation arranged and paid for by us .
Apply now at www . rurallap . com . au agedcareinsite . com . au 17