Home Care Package Heralds New Era for Seniors Living

The expansion of the federal government’s home care assistance program could herald a new era for retirement living and ageing in place.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg committed a $6.5 billion package in the budget for an additional 80,000 home care packages during the next two years, along with more respite services.

Cam Ansell from Ansell Strategic said the investment in the aged care sector could allow more people to stave off moving into aged care facilities, but rather age in place at home or in seniors living options.

Ansell said the investment in home care packages would help the 86,000 people on the waiting list but said it was a “very small sugar hit” for the ailing aged care providers, many of whom were going broke.

“Most of [the aged care providers] aren’t getting a return,” he said.

“Currently 70 per cent of the public purse goes to aged care, while 30 per cent goes to home care services.

“These measures signal a shift in balance of funding from a historic residential aged care focus, more toward home care.”

Ansell said the change would bring Australia more in line with the rest of the developed world where there was a much lower dependence on residential aged care, and would allow people to remain at home or in retirement living with support.

“The more you can satisfy baby boomers denial [of ageing] the better you can do, that’s where successful providers will be,” he said.

“They don’t want to be institutionalised … if you can provide accommodation for people which makes it feel like they’re not going into a nursing home then you will do well.”

Speaking at The Urban Developer’s vSummit on Retirement Living and Aged Care recently, LDK Healthcare founder and managing director Paul Browne said the notion of having two siloed seniors’ living industries was “on life support”.

“We’ve got to get our head out of the sand and, if we’re going to thrive as a senior living industry, we don’t have two markets,” he said.

“The whole industry and independent living units is on life support.

“We have a customer who wants to stay where they are … they are here now.”

LDK Healthcare offers its residents a “one-move guarantee” ensuring their residents’ needs are catered through to end-of-life, which Browne said was a policy that appealed to the market.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers partner for real estate advisory Tony Massaro said while the budget response did not address all of the recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aged Care, it did fund some critical areas.

“It’s not an insignificant sum, it’s a material sum … but the challenges are still there,” he said.

Massaro said there were five key areas that the federal government had addressed—home care, the services and sustainability of aged care, the quality and safety of aged care, the aged care workforce, and sector governance.

He said while the new minimum care standards in aged care facilities were good, they would be onerous for the troubled sector.

“With a minimum of 200 care minutes you can’t be as lean as you once were,” he said.

“The Home Care package will mean some people will be able to stave off going into aged care … in effect there will be a little bit of a reprieve.

“But home care is not a perfect substitute for aged care, particularly for people with higher needs.

“When you are talking about someone who needs 24-hour care that cannot be covered by Home Care, they need an aged-care provider.”