Revolutionising in-home care
National Seniors Australia has been successful in advocating changes in the way people are cared for, and this is saving the government billions of dollars.
Here’s what’s happening according to National Seniors Chief Advocate Ian Henschke.
When we survey members on what you want in aged care, you tell us you want to stay in your home as long as possible.
Our active campaigning for more home care has resulted in a remarkable outcome.
The latest Federal Budget has projected $2.2 billion in savings over the forward estimates because fewer people are entering residential aged care.
At the start of the 2019 Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, there were 100,000 people receiving a home care package and 128,000 waiting for a package at the level they needed. The latest figures show 235,000 have received a package and 40,000 are waiting.
Over the same period, the occupancy of residential care has declined, and this is where the savings are coming from and will continue to come from. It costs tens of thousands of dollars less to support a person at home than in residential care.
This is a good news story. On the morning after the Budget, Channel 9 Today presenter Karl Stefanovic asked me, “What did seniors get from the Budget?” I replied “Let’s turn that around and ask what did the Budget get from seniors? The answer’s $2.2 billion.”
The two-part ABC Four Corners episode Who cares? in 2018 helped bring about the Royal Commission. National Seniors played a key role in providing research detailing your experiences. We told the commission about people being forced to go into residential care because they couldn’t get home care. We told of people dying on the waitlist.
There are currently four levels of Home Care Packages above the entry-level Commonwealth Home Support Program (this system will be integrated from 1 July 2025). The problem is getting enough workers for both in-home and residential care.
The wait time to get a Home Care Package is now one to three months. That’s a vast improvement because the Royal Commission heard testimony from people waiting up to two years and evidence that around 30,000 people either died waiting or went into care in just 12 months.
Today that's all changed. The waitlist has been cut by more than a third and there are now 135,000 more people receiving a Home Care Package than there were four years ago.
Source: GEN-agedcaredata.gov.au
That’s a huge improvement. National Seniors has been there every step of the way, giving evidence on day one of the Royal Commission in 2019. Professor John McCallum—who was at the time National Seniors' CEO and Head of Research—told the Commission the home care wait list was a "running sore" and an "abject failure".
Residential care costs far more than home care, so we urged the government to see that providing more home care and cutting the wait list was not only good for older people and their families, but also good for the Budget.
The savings are huge. If you provide 100,000 Home Care Packages that each save $20,000 of residential care, that adds up to $2 billion. By the way, the $2.2 billion saved in the Budget will be spent on better health and aged care.
We recognise there always will be a need for high-quality, high-level residential care for those who simply cannot get the right or best care at home.
The biggest issue now is finding and training the workers to meet the growing demand.
The pay rise National Seniors supported—announced in the Budget—will help retain and hopefully attract more workers. Migration will also help but National Seniors continues its call to create thousands of mature age traineeships to help meet demand.
The carefully chosen trainees should be paid while training, (on the job and classroom work) and guaranteed a position at the end of their training. A highly successful pilot program in South Australia has shown the way forward. See ABC News about how workers will be needed in the aged care sector to meet demand via this ABC News YouTube report here.
We also repeat our call to exempt work income from the pension income test for care workers.
If the government really listens to what older people want and we have better trained and paid workers, the system will continue to improve.
The $2.2 billion savings in the latest budget is a sign this is happening. The Royal Commission has been a great step forward and our National Seniors advocacy is ensuring we build a better future.
Read more about our Aged Care campaign building a better aged care system with an emphasis on improving access to home care.
This article is featured in National Seniors Australia’s quarterly member magazine, Our Generation.
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