New home care manual provides clearer guidance
The updated home care guidelines will give providers much more clarity, says an industry expert.
The updated home care packages program guidelines give much more clarity to providers about what can and can’t be purchased, according to an industry expert.
“There are now clearer guidelines and clarification,” said Lorraine Poulos of LPA – which provides consultancy, training and support to the aged, disability health and home care sectors.
Released by the Department of Health and Aged Care, the 168-page operational manual is designed to help approved providers of home care packages understand their responsibilities. The guidelines provide information about fees and charges, package inclusions and exclusions, package budgets, and reporting and responding to special needs.
Speaking to Community Care Review, Ms Poulos said, before the revisions, there was confusion and ambiguity. “The guidance material around the specified care and services that can be purchased under a package have been ambiguous in the past. And there was a very liberal approach to what could be purchased under a package.”
Some clients viewed their home care packages program as a “bank account”, said Ms Poulos, “to purchase goods and equipment rather than support for care.”
She added: “I think taxpayers would query some of the previous purchases that have been allowed through a home care packages program, particularly with people with much higher acuity levels wanting to stay at home.”
There needs to be a “reasonable test”, said Ms Poulos. “Is this a reasonable purchase for an individual?”
Ms Poulos told CCR that when the best use of funding is being discussed with a client, there can often be conflict. “Sometimes that can come down to case managers saying, ‘Is this an assessed need or a want?’”
Such conflict can cause a relationship breakdown between providers and clients, said Ms Poulos. “This may cause some angst with consumers who perhaps have been using their package money for things that now may not be considered in line with the package.”
The new guidelines are, she said, a big improvement. “There have been many grey areas and it’s caused a lot of confusion … I think the sector is very, very happy that there has been clarification.”
Making news
Upon their release, the home care guidelines made headlines. On Tuesday, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported that home care clients could be denied mobility scooters as the assistive technology was not listed in the updated manual.
This prompted Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells to take to Twitter to assure clients that wasn’t the case. “Mobility scooters have not been excluded,” she wrote.
Reports that the Albanese Government have changed the rules about what Home Care Package recipients can claim are incorrect and misleading.
— Anika Wells MP (@AnikaWells) February 13, 2023
In particular, mobility scooters have not been excluded. @healthgovau pic.twitter.com/4IBnRRyC90
The home care packages scheme is facing a major overhaul with a new operational structure slated to come into play from 1 July 2024. In the meantime, home care providers and other stakeholders are invited to participate in an ongoing consultation program.
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The new Guidlines are not clearer. The HCP has been snuck in overnight with abhorrent changes that is going to disadvantage the elderly even further and make massive profits for service providers such as Residential Institutions, OT’s etc
How can you be okay with this and support the contempt Wells and Butler are giving to the elderly.
It’s shameful!!
I choked on my cup of tea as I read the Wells and Butler comments. We older Australians do not see the HCP as a free for all bonus of money and payments. We have to get permission to spend any money. We are not pampered and not do I feel it’s that great. Every non pbs medication is viewed badly and it’s not like that. Some medications that were on the pbs taken off by the liberal government. We have expensive doctors appointments and our children are not available to take us we have to get help. I am utterly exhausted and broken by the way we are treated and I just wonder what next. A doctor made a mistake and destroyed my health and she didn’t even say sorry.
“Released by the Department of Health and Aged Care, the 168-page operational manual is designed to help approved providers of home care packages understand their responsibilities. The guidelines provide information about fees and charges, package inclusions and exclusions, package budgets, and reporting and responding to special needs.
Lorraine Poulos
Some clients viewed their home care packages program as a “bank account”, said Ms Poulos, “to purchase goods and equipment rather than support for care.”
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Ummmm …how are we to purchase such things as mobility aids if we have not “saved up” for them. That is how it is being done. Is there an option we are missing. Never forget we are the generation that did not all have superannuation to pad out our old age. Never forget that.
Who decides when a want becomes a need? Why is a want for a working air conditioner not a need? If you are confined to bed, or a chair through summer, aircon is a need in many cases. We are not greedy, grasping , rorters of the system! We are sick, disabled, elderly pensioners, not the villains we are being painted! I am bitterly disappointed in the attitude taken to those of us who contributed so much to the development of this beautiful country. We are grateful for help, but please, don’t treat us as conniving grasping cheats!
My generation suffered rationing as children and we are now having home care rationed in our twilight years. Vital air conditioning is no longer available to those of us who opt to stay in our homes. Why should the residents pf nursing homes have the comfort of air conditioning while in these days of 40 degree summer heat air conditioning is denied to those of us who have opted to stay home. We can no longer receive help to have guttering fixed and cleaned .So we will have to gwt up on ladders and DIY. We can no longer enjoy our senior years with craft. art or such leisure activities which may alleviate the anxiety of the COVID isolation. And now we are accused of using our package as a bank account. I wish those who deplete our final years a painful boring and harassed twilight time in theur senior years.