2UE Afternoons with Murray Wilton and Tracey Spice - Aged Care, HACC, National Aged Care Conference
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Topics: Aged Care, HACC, National Aged Care Conference
Murray Wilton: With Australia expected to have more than three-and-a-half million seniors by 2050, that's a lot of people. It's pretty important the aged care industry gets some serious reform, and over 1000 delegates and experts are meeting at a two-day conference in Adelaide starts today.
Let's talk about the Government's new plan which includes spending $4 million over five years to increase home care options. Now before we take a look at this issue, the Minister for Ageing, Mark Butler, we're happy to say is joining us on programme.
Minister, good afternoon.
Mark Butler: G'day guys.
Tracey Spice: Minister, we're so happy to have you on the programme. I know every family faces these challenges. I'm going through it with my grandfather at the moment and gees, it's a complicated process. And there really isn't enough help in the community out there. Can you take us through exactly what kind of help, how many hours a week, exact details that this Government will be offering down the track for aged people?
Mark Butler: Well currently the options are relatively limited. You can get a low care package which might give you four or five hours of care per week, which over, you know, 24 hours, seven days a week, is not a big amount. Or you can get a high care package which might give you as much as 14 hours a week, which better service people's needs who might be, you know pretty frail, may be experiencing dementia.
But you know, what families told us that there aren't enough of these packages. So what we've done - the centrepiece of the reform package that we announced a few months ago is to increase the number of packages in the community by about two-thirds over the coming few years. And that will give a whole lot more families a range of different options to be able - as your earlier listener said, to keep mum or dad or their husband or wife living at home instead of having to go into a nursing home.
Murray Wilton: Are we doing anything now, Mark, to assist those people when they get to that age to fund all of this?
Mark Butler: We are, these packages have been in the system for some years but what's clear is that there just aren't enough of them. You know, the one message I heard very clearly is that there's not much unmet demand for people to go into nursing homes out in the community. There aren't huge waiting lists for that in most parts of the country. But there's very significant unmet demand for people getting help in their own home.
And what older Australians told me is that they don't want their aged care system as it has been for 20 or 30 years to be built around the idea of nursing homes. They want the primary objective of the aged care system to be to support them to stay in their own home as long as possible, and if at all possible, up until the day they die.
Tracey Spice: Got to say though Mark, on top of the monetary issue which we'll go into a little bit more in a couple of minutes time, there's an awful lot of red tape. I mean, I was tearing my hair out, you know, the forms for ACAT and the forms for a HACC package. And one of them is federal government, and the other one's state government. And then my grand dad's a Vet, so there's Department of Veterans' Affairs. Are you looking at simplifying it as well?
Mark Butler: I told a story at the conference this morning at one of the forums I'd held over summer - I had over 4000 people come to forums - and one woman stood up and said look I worked I the aged care sector for 25 years and I thought I knew it back-to-front, until I had to find a bed for mum. And for the life for me I couldn't get the information I thought we needed as a family to make the best possible choice.
Now if she can't find, what hope have people who've never come across the aged care system have? Who might have language barrier issues for example. So one of the big parts of our reform package is to make that entry point - the sort of front end that families experience when they're thinking about some care they need for a loved one, make it much, much easier than it is today.
We had Ita Buttrose at the conference this morning who's now the president of Alzheimer's Australia, and really spearheading a campaign to lift awareness in the community around dementia issues. How she came to that role was caring for her dad. She was the primary carer for her dad in the last couple of years of his life when he was affected by vascular dementia which is the second most common form of dementia.
So she brings those personal stories, as one of Australian's great communicators to this cause as well.
Murray Wilton: Do we have any figures on how many people do stay at home, Mark, as opposed to going into a facility?
Mark Butler: Well the vast bulk do. There are only about at any one point in time about 160,000 people in residential care facilities. And there's, you know, three million people over the age of 65 today. There will be nine million over the age of 65 in three or four decades.
So what we do know is this is going to grow, and we do know also that people increasingly want the choice to stay at home. But look, that means that you know, people still want the confidence that even though they do stay at home, if they're needs just get too significant, that they want a good quality residential care sector, or a nursing home sector that - to fall back on if they really need it. But they want that to be a last possible resort.
Tracey Spice: Yeah, speaking of that sector, after the May Budget, the Coalition came out and said look, because of the cuts in the budget, more older Australians will have to pay for their aged care, the net spend in 2012/13 was $55.2 million down to $26.9 million the year after. Can you rule out Australians having to actually pay much more for aged care in the future?
Mark Butler: Well people make a contribution to their aged care costs and always have. For example, if they're in a nursing home they'll pay part of their pension for the food and the electricity they get through there. But you know, the aged care budget has been climbing very significantly over recent years, as you'd expect because we're an ageing population.
The money in this year's budget is about 70 - seven, zero - per cent more than it was five years ago. And you know, that trend is likely to continue for as many years as we can see forward.
What we wanted to do was to make sure that where people have the capacity to make a reasonable contribution, they do make that. But the Commonwealth Government - the Australian Government on behalf of taxpayers will always remain the major funder of aged care services.
One of the recommendations we got from the Productivity Commission last year was that people should have to pay more out of their family home for aged care services. And we ruled that recommendation out completely because we heard very clearly from older Australians - and from their families for that matter - that they don't want the means testing of the family home to change at all.
Murray Wilton: Minister, good to talk to you. Good luck with the conference. I hope you've got some good outcomes.
Mark Butler: Thanks for having me.
Murray Wilton: All the best. Minister for Ageing, Mark Butler joining us on the programme.
Murray Wilton: With Australia expected to have more than three-and-a-half million seniors by 2050, that's a lot of people. It's pretty important the aged care industry gets some serious reform, and over 1000 delegates and experts are meeting at a two-day conference in Adelaide starts today.
Let's talk about the Government's new plan which includes spending $4 million over five years to increase home care options. Now before we take a look at this issue, the Minister for Ageing, Mark Butler, we're happy to say is joining us on programme.
Minister, good afternoon.
Mark Butler: G'day guys.
Tracey Spice: Minister, we're so happy to have you on the programme. I know every family faces these challenges. I'm going through it with my grandfather at the moment and gees, it's a complicated process. And there really isn't enough help in the community out there. Can you take us through exactly what kind of help, how many hours a week, exact details that this Government will be offering down the track for aged people?
Mark Butler: Well currently the options are relatively limited. You can get a low care package which might give you four or five hours of care per week, which over, you know, 24 hours, seven days a week, is not a big amount. Or you can get a high care package which might give you as much as 14 hours a week, which better service people's needs who might be, you know pretty frail, may be experiencing dementia.
But you know, what families told us that there aren't enough of these packages. So what we've done - the centrepiece of the reform package that we announced a few months ago is to increase the number of packages in the community by about two-thirds over the coming few years. And that will give a whole lot more families a range of different options to be able - as your earlier listener said, to keep mum or dad or their husband or wife living at home instead of having to go into a nursing home.
Murray Wilton: Are we doing anything now, Mark, to assist those people when they get to that age to fund all of this?
Mark Butler: We are, these packages have been in the system for some years but what's clear is that there just aren't enough of them. You know, the one message I heard very clearly is that there's not much unmet demand for people to go into nursing homes out in the community. There aren't huge waiting lists for that in most parts of the country. But there's very significant unmet demand for people getting help in their own home.
And what older Australians told me is that they don't want their aged care system as it has been for 20 or 30 years to be built around the idea of nursing homes. They want the primary objective of the aged care system to be to support them to stay in their own home as long as possible, and if at all possible, up until the day they die.
Tracey Spice: Got to say though Mark, on top of the monetary issue which we'll go into a little bit more in a couple of minutes time, there's an awful lot of red tape. I mean, I was tearing my hair out, you know, the forms for ACAT and the forms for a HACC package. And one of them is federal government, and the other one's state government. And then my grand dad's a Vet, so there's Department of Veterans' Affairs. Are you looking at simplifying it as well?
Mark Butler: I told a story at the conference this morning at one of the forums I'd held over summer - I had over 4000 people come to forums - and one woman stood up and said look I worked I the aged care sector for 25 years and I thought I knew it back-to-front, until I had to find a bed for mum. And for the life for me I couldn't get the information I thought we needed as a family to make the best possible choice.
Now if she can't find, what hope have people who've never come across the aged care system have? Who might have language barrier issues for example. So one of the big parts of our reform package is to make that entry point - the sort of front end that families experience when they're thinking about some care they need for a loved one, make it much, much easier than it is today.
We had Ita Buttrose at the conference this morning who's now the president of Alzheimer's Australia, and really spearheading a campaign to lift awareness in the community around dementia issues. How she came to that role was caring for her dad. She was the primary carer for her dad in the last couple of years of his life when he was affected by vascular dementia which is the second most common form of dementia.
So she brings those personal stories, as one of Australian's great communicators to this cause as well.
Murray Wilton: Do we have any figures on how many people do stay at home, Mark, as opposed to going into a facility?
Mark Butler: Well the vast bulk do. There are only about at any one point in time about 160,000 people in residential care facilities. And there's, you know, three million people over the age of 65 today. There will be nine million over the age of 65 in three or four decades.
So what we do know is this is going to grow, and we do know also that people increasingly want the choice to stay at home. But look, that means that you know, people still want the confidence that even though they do stay at home, if they're needs just get too significant, that they want a good quality residential care sector, or a nursing home sector that - to fall back on if they really need it. But they want that to be a last possible resort.
Tracey Spice: Yeah, speaking of that sector, after the May Budget, the Coalition came out and said look, because of the cuts in the budget, more older Australians will have to pay for their aged care, the net spend in 2012/13 was $55.2 million down to $26.9 million the year after. Can you rule out Australians having to actually pay much more for aged care in the future?
Mark Butler: Well people make a contribution to their aged care costs and always have. For example, if they're in a nursing home they'll pay part of their pension for the food and the electricity they get through there. But you know, the aged care budget has been climbing very significantly over recent years, as you'd expect because we're an ageing population.
The money in this year's budget is about 70 - seven, zero - per cent more than it was five years ago. And you know, that trend is likely to continue for as many years as we can see forward.
What we wanted to do was to make sure that where people have the capacity to make a reasonable contribution, they do make that. But the Commonwealth Government - the Australian Government on behalf of taxpayers will always remain the major funder of aged care services.
One of the recommendations we got from the Productivity Commission last year was that people should have to pay more out of their family home for aged care services. And we ruled that recommendation out completely because we heard very clearly from older Australians - and from their families for that matter - that they don't want the means testing of the family home to change at all.
Murray Wilton: Minister, good to talk to you. Good luck with the conference. I hope you've got some good outcomes.
Mark Butler: Thanks for having me.
Murray Wilton: All the best. Minister for Ageing, Mark Butler joining us on the programme.
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