Aged Care Crisis
for consumers, by consumers
Kate Swaffer explains what people with dementia want from residential care, based on her own experience living with younger onset dementia, as a past care partner advocating for and supporting three people with dementia in residential care, and from feedback she’s gathered during focus groups and interviews with people with dementia around Australia
Please note: This is a resource web page from another website in development and not intended to stand alone. The new website will provide an in depth analysis of the aged care system and shows how the proposed Community Aged Care Hub of this site would work and resolve the many problems revealed by an analysis of the system. You will need to be familiar with the suggestion for a Community Aged Care Hub.
The section that functions as an Executive Summary and which would be adequate for many readers, is Soliciting Feedback (in Part 4). It would be beneficial for most readers to learn about the proposed hub and then read Soliciting Feedback. Those still interested who may want to explore a particular provider of consumer services or a particular issue, can link back to this web page.
Why is public participation important? Governments are responsible for decisions that have both intended and often unforeseen impacts on the community. Transparent and well-managed public participation is essential to fully inform government policies and their translation into effective strategies, programs and projects (1). So why is it so elusive?
AS CPSA said at the time the aged care reforms were announced, they will lead to a financial bonanza for aged care providers and a two-class nursing home system. That two-class system and bonanza are now taking shape.
More than half (52%) of aged care residents have symptoms of depression, compared with 10-15% of older people living in the community. As well as feelings of sadness and low mood, aged care residents with depression feel uninterested in activities, hopeless about the future, guilty about the past and may desire death.
Dignity is crucial to the proper operation of rights. If rights are to do what they are meant to do, they need to be deeply embedded in a country’s society and culture. It’s not enough just to have rights sitting on the books. The overwhelming majority of people in the country need to respect them at a personal level.
