The government has this week reminded aged care providers of two ways they can ensure clients are able to access relevant care information in their preferred language.
This includes the free translation service – available for government-subsidised aged care providers, peak bodies and Partners in Culturally Appropriate Care across Australia – by the Centre for Diversity in Ageing, and a $5.4 million funding grant to extend the Health in My Language program on a national scale in 2025-26.
A sizeable proportion of Australians accessing aged care services are from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, with one in three Australians over 65 born overseas and one in six speaking a language other than English at home.
While acknowledging the importance of the translation service and HiML program, Ellen Gore, manager of aged care services at Ethnic Community Services Co-Operative, and Dina Petrakis, chief executive officer, assert that more needs to be done to ensure culturally appropriate aged care is available and accessible to the 1.2 million older Australians born overseas.
The ECSC is a UNESCO awarded support organisation for bilingual and bicultural models of home care and support. Staff speak more than 100 languages and have been providing aged care support to seniors over 65 from more than 28 different cultural, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds for more than 20 years.
Ms Gore told Community Care Review that isolation is becoming a major issue amongst older people, particularly those from CALD backgrounds, as they find the aged care system particularly difficult to navigate, and at times, culturally inappropriate. Ms Petrakis said that it can be so complicated that they frequently have the children of older people unable to navigate it, despite being born in Australia and having English as a first language.
“We need to see the system become easier to navigate,” Ms Petrakis said.
“One of the biggest systems, of course, is My Aged Care, a call centre. When they need to go through assessment, leave alone their language, leave alone that they’re afraid of speaking sometimes, they talk to somebody they don’t know, they’ve never seen that person in their life, so, there is a barrier of disclosing personal information,” Ms Gore explained.
“After that, we’re going through assessments, it’s a face-to-face assessment. As you know, older people sometimes don’t pick up the phones. If they don’t know the number, if they don’t recognize the number, they won’t answer. If they don’t answer two or three times, that’s it. So, the process starts again.”
Furthermore, Ms Petrakis said that direct translation services for healthcare is not always faith-appropriate or culturally-appropriate, as topics which may be discussed openly in Australia can still be considered taboo elsewhere. As a result, older people from CALD backgrounds do not engage with the service and miss out on critical information and care.
Ms Gore and Ms Petrakis told CCR that another concern they have is the new fee-for-service Support at Home program, as it incorrectly assumes older people will pay for social services.
“There is a huge issue in Australia and worldwide at the moment with our ageing population and social isolation and people living alone and being lonely and what that does to physical health, mental health and even mortality rates,” said Ms Petrakis.
“We think that at the moment, the numbers of people accessing social support through the Commonwealth Home Support Program will probably decline when it goes to Support at Home [and] that’s a concern.
“We haven’t heard of any mitigation strategies or what’s going to happen to look at this as a risk and ensure that it doesn’t happen.”
Alongside pushing for an easier-to-navigate system, Ms Petrakis and Ms Gore told CCR that they believe the age which aged care services can be accessed should be less arbitrary, as different socio-economic and cultural factors when growing up can impact a person’s health and need for care.
Currently, ECSC provides general exercise classes, bus outings, flexible respite care, home cleaning assistance, health meetings with bilingual doctors and health workers, music groups and English language classes, all with a focus on social inclusion and access to faith-appropriate, culturally-appropriate information, Ms Gore told CCR.
A webinar on the free translation service offered by the Centre for Diversity in Ageing will be held on 25 February from 2:00pm to 3:00pm (AEDT), with information on how providers can make a request for a translation.
More information on the translation service can be found here and registration for the webinar can be done here.
More information on the HiML program can be found here.
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