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September 2004 Community care strategy We have recently heard a great deal about residential aged care sector with the release of the Hogan Report on pricing arrangements. We now have the Australian Government's strategy for community care, The way forward: A new strategy for community care, to consider. This strategy is the result of one of the many reviews established by the previous Minister for Ageing, Kevin Andrews, in 2002, and was intended to simplify and stream-line current arrangements for the administration and delivery of community care services. The strategy considered assessment processes, access to services, eligibility criteria, a common approach to determining consumer fees, accountability, quality assurance, information management and data collection and planning. According to the strategy, the Australian Government is investing $6.4 million over the next four years for the range of services it funds. But these dollars will be spread very thinly, with the average amount of time provided for personal care assistance for an individual only 50 minutes per week - for domestic assistance it is only 38 minutes every week.(1) Any additional funding will not go to more services, but will be gobbled up by the increasing number of people needing assistance, with figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showing the number of people aged 65 and over is expected to double from 2.4 million to 4.2 million in 2021.(2) The ANF is part of the Community Care Coalition that has been seeking a more organised and better-funded system to meet the needs of people living at home. This coalition involves a range of organisations including Alzheimer's Australia, the Australian Local Government Association, Meals on Wheels and the Australian Council of Community Nursing Services, who met in Canberra recently to consider the review. While it acknowledged the strategy was an important start, the coalition is calling on all political parties, at all levels of government to:
Fixing community care is not an easy job but it should be a priority. Nurses must be involved in getting the system to work better. The ANF is working to improve the system and nurses can help by asking those standing for election about their plans for community care. To read the strategy visit: www.health.gov.au. References |