Media Release

15 March 2006

Aged care summit creates opportunities for long-term solutions

The ANF was part of the Ministerial meeting convened yesterday to come up with solutions for reducing the incidence of elder abuse in residential aged care. Short term fixes were discussed in detail but Santo Santoro, the new Minister for Ageing, seemed willing to listen to some of the longer term remedies put forward by the ANF.

Victoria Gilmore, ANF federal liaison officer said, ‘short term fixes may help with picking up and responding to the reports of abuse but the longer term solutions will be the ones that make living in aged care facilities safer for older people.’

The ANF will be pursuing implementation of these longer term strategies such as the licensing of personal care assistants and overcoming staffing shortages with the Minister as well as working with him to effectively introduce some of the short term strategies which he supports including an improved complaints resolution scheme and more unannounced spot checks of aged care facilities.

The Minister for Ageing listened to all representatives at the meeting including the consumer groups, providers and the workers in aged care and agreed there were issues around mandatory reporting that need to be addressed such as who receives the reports and who needs to do something about the reports.

‘We look forward to working with the Minister to address the problems of elder abuse and to continue improving the care that is provided to older people living in aged care facilities,’ said Ms Gilmore.

The ANF, representing 145,000 members, is the professional and industrial voice for nurses in Australia.

Media inquiries
Victoria Gilmore, Federal Liason Officer 0409 221 699
Ged Kearney, Assistant Federal Secretary 0417 053 322
Lani Stanistreet, Manager Communication & Journals 0414 471 339