Evaluation of the consumer - directed care initiative - Final Report
4.4 Profile of participants - CDRC
- Executive summary
- Glossary
1 Introduction- 2 The consumer-directed care initiative
- 3 Evaluation of the consumer-directed care initiative
4 Profile of participants and the supports they accessed- 5 Implementation and operation of the initiative
- 6 Impact of the initiative for CDC participants and their carers
- 7 Impact of the initiative for CDRC participants and the people they care for
- 8 Impact on providers and the broader service system
- 9 Cost assessment and cost-effectiveness of the initiative
- 10 Key findings
- 11 Lessons learnt and strategies for consideration
- Appendices
- References
The CDRC participant group was slightly older than carers who access NRCP, with a greater proportion of participants aged 65 and over than the NRCP group. There were also fewer CDRC participants aged under 50 years than NRCP, with the majority of CDRC participants aged between 50 and 64 years (44 per cent).
This is largely consistent with providers’ descriptions of their approaches to selecting CDRC participants – that is, carers with the interest in and capacity to self-direct and self-manage a package (generally adult daughters or sons caring for their parent, or younger spouses), and carers who were receiving low level support or no support prior to commencing their package.
Figure 7: CDRC and NRCP participants, by age
Source: 2nd CDRC provider data collection (July-Sept 2011), and NRCP 2011-Q1 data provided by the Department of Health and Ageing
In terms of participants from special needs groups, there were considerable numbers who were reported as financially or socially disadvantaged and who lived in a rural or remote area, though there was no NRCP data available to compare these proportions.While participants from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background appeared quite low, this was broadly the same as carers’ representation in the NRCP group. People from non-English speaking backgrounds, however, had much higher representation in the CDRC participant group than the NRCP group, though there was no evidence collected from CDRC providers to suggest that they were targeting people from CALD backgrounds.
There were relatively few participants who were reported as belonging to any other special needs group identified by the Aged Care Act.
Table 5: CDRC participants by special needs group status
| CDRC | NRCP | |
|---|---|---|
| Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander | 3% | 3% |
| Culturally or linguistically diverse | 16% | 6% |
| Live in a rural/remote area | 21% | na |
| Financially/socially disadvantaged | 31% | na |
| Homeless or at risk of homelessness | 1% | na |
| Veteran or spouse of a Veteran | 1% | na |
| Care-leaver | 1% | na |
Source: 2nd CDRC provider data collection (July-Sept 2011), and NRCP 2011-Q1 data provided by the Department of Health and Ageing. ‘na’ indicates data was not available.
Only 16 per cent of CDRC participants were accessing NRCP services prior to commencing their CDRC package, although more than half of participants (or the person they cared for) were accessing low level home and community care (HACC) or other community care services. Top of pageFigure 8: CDRC participants’ service status prior to commencing a CDRC package
Source: 2nd CDRC provider data collection (July-Sept 2011)
The number of exits reported for the April-June 2011 period was significantly higher than for the July-September period – as illustrated in the table below. When CDRC packages were originally approved, they were approved to operate for 12 months only – until the end of June 2011. Some CDRC providers interviewed indicated that they exited all of their CDRC participants at the end of June, and had been actively planning for this to occur (for example, by putting in place other supports for the care recipient such as a standard packaged care package). However, some providers stated that they were unaware that the packages had been extended, and hence exited participants unnecessarily. It is unclear whether this was related to an internal communication issue or a lack of adequate communication from the Department.Exit data from the July-September period shows a different picture, with only 12 exits occurring. This represented 6 per cent of participants receiving a CDRC package during this period.
Table 6: Number of exits, by reason for exit – CDRC
| Reason for exit | April-June | July-Sept |
|---|---|---|
| Care recipient died | 11 | 1 |
| Moved to another town/city/state | 1 | 0 |
| Care recipient moved to residential aged care | 12 | 11 |
| Care recipient moved to standard (non-CDRC) package | 15 | 0 |
| No longer needed package | 9 | 0 |
| Other | 27 | 0 |
| Total exits | 75 | 12 |
| Proportion of participants exiting | 44% | 6% |
Source: 1st and 2nd CDRC provider data collections (April-June and July-Sept 2011)
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