Flexibility, choice key to quality care
Sector leaders encouraged home care providers to prioritise staff training as they prepare for the 1 November transition to the new Act, as educated staff are best equipped to provide flexible and individual-based care.
Home care providers need to focus on staff training as they prepare for the upcoming reforms, and ensure they have the right knowledge and training to implement new systems, My Guardian chair John Ajaka told the day 1 audience at the Ageing Australia NSW/ACT conference. But they also need to ensure they are engaging with participants in supported decision-making and providing care that can adapt to changing needs.
“We all know that when the NDIS was implemented, it was all about choice and control, ensuring that people with disability had choice and control. It’s very similar with aged care,” the former New South Wales Minister for Ageing said while speaking on the Transition to the New Aged Care Act panel.
“But, of course, many people will say to you, ‘but what if they don’t have the capacity?’ And that’s why it’s clearly supported decision-making. By supporting them to make their decisions and allowing them to make decisions, it does give them some choice,” Mr Ajaka said.
“And for me, that is one of the best aspects of the new legislation coming in; that you involve the person you’re looking after to the best of their capacity, and you create the supports around that in order to understand and implement what they want to choose.”
An emphasis on ensuring home care is catered to the individual was clear amongst the other panellists too, with Ageing Australia chief executive officer Tom Symondson saying it is going to be “particularly important” to avoid a generic Support at Home experience.
“And I think the fear a lot of people bring to me is that it will all look a bit the same when what the human rights statement is supposed to say is it should look completely different,” said Mr Symondson.
He gave the example of showering schedules, and the need for staff to understand the need for flexibility if an individual decides they don’t want to engage in a particular care activity that was scheduled, whether it is shower assistance, meals or cleaning.
“How are we preparing ourselves for that? Because genuinely that’s what people say and want, and we’ve got a system that doesn’t necessarily enable that,” Mr Symondson said.
This goes back to training staff properly to be able to have discretion and use their knowledge and understanding to respond, Mr Ajaka added.
“So you do have to evolve with the times, but evolve in a good way, not losing that fundamental principle that you’re dealing with an individual and you’re dealing with their rights and what they need,” he said.
Also speaking on the panel, Older Persons Advocacy Network chief executive officer Craig Gear reminded providers that they didn’t have to wait until 1 November to begin implementing this rights-based and individual care approach, and that it was not too early to start talking about and enacting the Statement of Rights.
Allied health going to be ‘very important’
StewartBrown senior partner Grant Corderoy told the day 1 audience that from a financial perspective, providers needed to prepare for changes to home care package support.
“Home care packages is characterised today that about 90 per cent are either fully or partially supported. Now that’s going to change, that percentage is going to change,” he explained.
In particular, he said providers needed to pay attention to everyday living services, because if people are paying a contribution of 80 per cent for those services, they will simply look to the private sector.
“So I think it’s going to be a really challenging time because the providers are going to get a new cohort… and that new cohort [is] not only going to have different expectations, but they’re going to be conscious and more aware of what the cost is of getting the service from a provider, or what the cost is if they didn’t use a provider,” he said.
Mr Corderoy added that allied health is going to be “very important” for the clinical area of home care, where there’s a lower co-contribution, or no co-contribution.
“So, I think that this is a time for providers to start to look at their own business models and look at business models of other organisations,” he said.
Mr Corderoy, Mr Symondson, Mr Ajaka and Mr Gear were joined on the panel by Russell Kennedy principal Victor Harcourt and Columbia Aged Care Services chief executive officer Lucy O’Flaherty.
