5.1: Community care and support for carers

The 1997-1998 Portfolio Budget Statements, informs Senators and Members of Parliament of the proposed allocation of resources to portfolios outcomes and their objectives and targets including the agencies within the Health and Family Services portfolio.

In this section:

Budget Measures

Objective

To help frail aged people and people with a disability live independently in their homes as long as possible; to support their carers in their caring role; and to improve the general health and well-being of older Australians.

Priority outcomes

Maintain and improve the health and wellbeing of older Australians, in conjunction with State and Territory governments, older people, other programs and sectors.
Improved support for carers through the National Carer Action Plan.
Improved Home and Community Care (HACC) assessment process to support appropriate referral available to services.
Improvements in the level and quality of community care services for people assessed as requiring support.
Greater equity in the distribution of HACC program outputs between regions.
An output based framework for monitoring the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of community care services.
Equitable fees based on financial capacity of the client.

Strategies

Develop and implement a national approach for maintaining and improving the health of older Australians, in conjunction with the Conference for Older Australians, State and Territory governments, and in consultation with current and prospective users of aged care services.
Implement the National Carer Action Plan by:
- expanding the respite program to more flexibly meet the needs of the carers, including assistance for carer resource centres; and
- developing mechanisms for providing better carer needs assessment and advice and continuing information and support services.
Develop and trial a HACC minimum data set to improve access to data for program policy, planning and accountability purposes.
Facilitate initial development work on a community care classification instrument to provide a funding mechanism based on consumer needs.
Sign new HACC agreements with States and Territories.
Approve new HACC regional/project funds with State and Territories, and new Commonwealth regional respite centres, in line with growth funding.
Develop measures to assess the quality of HACC services against the national service standards at the regional, state and national levels.
Develop an output based framework for monitoring the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of community care services.
Facilitate the development with States and Territories of an independent assessment process for people with complex care needs for referral to appropriate services.
Improve equitable access to HACC services by:
- continuing to work towards equalising HACC funding per capita across States and Territories;
- implementing regional output planning and regional funding allocations, taking into account regional demography, existing service delivery patterns and costs of services.
Implement the HACC National Fees Policy in consultation with States and Territories.

Performance indicators and targets

Effectiveness

Indicator	Target	Information source and reporting frequency
Number of services and benefits provided to people assessed as needing them (Priority Outcome 5; Strategies 6, 9)	Increased provision compared to previous year for HACC, Domiciliary Nursing Care Benefit and Community Aged Care Packages	HACC Service Provision Collection HFS reports Annual
Client utilisation of Carer Respite Centres (Priority Outcome 2; Strategies 6, 8)	Not applicable	Carer respite centre data (yet to be developed) Annual
Effectiveness of projects under the Healthy Seniors Initiative in terms of contribution to health maintenance and improvement for older people (Priority Outcome 1; Strategy 1)	75 per cent of projects achieve approved objectives	Individual project evaluations Annual

Efficiency

Indicator

Target

Information source and reporting frequency

Cost to Commonwealth per unit of output of HACC services

(Priority Outcome 5; Strategies 3,8,10)

Unit cost to Commonwealth decreases as user fees increase

HFS Payments system

HACC Service Provision Collection

Annual

Quality

Indicator	Target	Information source and reporting frequency
Quality performance on HACC measures by region (Priority Outcomes 4,6; Strategies 4,7,8)	High quality performance across all regions	HACC Service Provision Collection Annual

Equity

Indicator	Target	Information source and reporting frequency
Comparative performance of States, Territories and regions in HACC programs (Priority Outcomes 4,5; Strategies 3,4,7,8,10)	HACC output targets	HACC Service Provision Collection Annual

Performance assessment: evaluation

No major evaluations are planned for this Sub-program in 1997-98.

How the program is resourced: reconciliation of appropriations to the program and summary of portfolio outlays (Excel 50 KB)

Variations to Program Outlays 1996-97 to 1997-98 (Excel 24 KB)