Aged Care Insite Issue 98 | December-January 2017 | Page 21

practical living in an aged-care facility. From the point of view of staff who were already overworked and had not enough time to conduct their daily tasks, it was just one more hassle for them to have to look after the needs of couples, so it was too much trouble to bother. What perspectives did the baby boomers who also worked in aged care offer? That was interesting, because you would think they would defend their industry, but the majority of them said they regularly have gut-wrenching experiences as workers. They see things they think are just simply not right, and one of the things that breaks their heart is seeing long-term couples separated. People who have been married 50 or 60 years. Maybe they’re not married, but have been together for a very long time, and through circumstances completely beyond their control, they have that relationship broken up either by the bureaucracy or the institution. Most of the respondents who chose to answer this survey had [extremely] strong opinions about providers making the maximum effort to keep partners together. They thought that should be the norm, but it isn’t. Given that baby boomers will increasingly be entering aged care, what should organisations do with these findings? What changes should be made? who visits them, who they can visit, how they spend their day and what kind of activities they choose to participate in. The clearest message that was coming through from a lot of these responses was they want to maintain the life they’ve always had. No matter what age they become, baby boomers said they want to be able to maintain the life they’ve always had, to maintain the interests they’ve always had, and not to have anyone else dictate that to them. What was revealed through the survey about aged-care workers’ views on couples sharing a bed? That was quite interesting, because the study was done in two stages. The first stage was interviewing aged-care experts, and that ranged from carers and nurses through to management and directors of facilities, and people who act as consultants or quality assessors in those environments. The other group that provided rich data was baby boomers who responded to the survey who were, in fact, aged-care workers, nurses and carers. About a third of them worked in the industry. Each group provided quite a broad range of examples of what goes on in aged care. What became clear was that from one provider to the next, there were different policies and attitudes towards couples being able to stay together within a facility. There were some facilities that catered to that and made much effort to provide rooms that were either adjoining and could be arranged as one bedroom plus a sitting room or were single rooms big enough for a double bed to be in the room. [However, these] forward thinking providers [were not typical]. The norm seems to be to separate people; to put them either in single beds in the same room, which in the view of baby boomers meant being separated, or in different rooms or even separate wings of the building. There were a few responses, definitely in the minority, [that showed] poor attitudes towards couples sharing a bed or a room One thing that became evident was that providers need to look at their buildings. Many current buildings don’t have rooms big enough to suit couples, because it hasn’t been thought about. There seems to be a growing trend to move to facilities that have individual rooms designed for singles, and not necessarily with any adjoining door to a neighbouring room. I’m told the new building stock coming through is also likely to follow this model of small, single rooms with their own private ensuite. That’s not going to work for couples who want to share a room. So providers need to start thinking, well what facilities are we going to build in the future? How are we going to accommodate couples? The current estimate is that about a third of aged-care residents are married or in de facto relationships. Even if they’re not living together because one partner’s in an aged-care facility, they still want to spend time together and have enough space and an environment conducive to that. Whether the partners are in there together or separately, they need to have a double bed so they can cosy up and conduct their relationship the way they would have when they were living at home. Providers need to think about this. The other aspect is training staff to respect the privacy of couples, because there’s not a lot of privacy in aged care. People come and go in and out of rooms, often without knocking. There must be some more awareness of the needs of couples and perhaps [better] timing of staff duties so that there is a chance for couples to be alone together. Then the other aspect of it is the government needs to rethink some policies, because it seems that one of the big drivers separating couples is the aged-care funding instrument. Quite often, an ACAT [Aged Care Assessment Team] will come into the couple’s home, they will assess the need for each partner, and if one partner is deemed not to need residential aged care, then obviously there’s no funding provided for that person. They treat each person as an individual instead of looking at the couple as a whole and acknowledging the fact