Submission to Australian Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee Inquiry into Aged Care Service Delivery

 

This Senate Inquiry was established to consider the implications of the Government’s decision to delay the commencement of the new Support at Home program until 1 November 2025 while also withholding the release of any additional Home Care Packages.

In principle, AHPA supported the delay because various key aspects of the program are not yet in place. We are especially concerned that the current approach to Support at Home does not guarantee that older Australians will receive the allied health care they need, but instead rations aged key services via wait lists and failures to address other existing flaws in the aged care system.

However, we are not convinced that simply delaying the rollout of the program will rectify these problems, and our submission therefore addresses other related matters under the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference.

The present approach to Support at Home risks undermining federal Government policy of supporting older people to live at home for as long as possible, thereby resulting in higher costs of hospitalisation and residential aged care.

AHPA is particularly concerned that the current Australian approach to both home and residential aged care:

  • fails to take sufficient account of the diversity of types of allied health services in aged care;

  • is not based on meeting clinically assessed allied health needs;

  • does not reflect the specific nature of the demands on allied health professionals providing aged care services in diverse contexts; and

  • does not meet the reablement standard to which the new aged care legislation, in response to recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, should aspire.

Our recommendations include:

  • Provide nationally reliable and consistent clinical needs identification and assessment processes for allied health in home and residential aged care

  • Provide funded allied health care according to assessed need

  • Classify osteopathy, chiropractic and art therapy as clinical supports in the same way as other allied health professions, so that older people on low incomes do not have to pay up to 17.5% of the costs of these services

  • Embed reablement and multidisciplinary team care in aged care policy and practice

  • Base Support at Home billing for allied health on client-attributable time

  • Reconsider the current proposed $15,000 lifetime cap for home modifications funding

SubmissionLiana CrossAged Care, Support at home