The move to aged care

Aged care is one of the biggest social issues we need to consider in Australia today. This is due to the difficulties residential care facilities and other care services face with funding requirements and the ageing of Australia’s population.

Aged care services, both at-home and residential care, are heavily subsidised by the government and services are not keeping up with expectations and demands of our ageing population.

Before accessing certain care programs, a person needs to be assessed by an Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT). A new report released on 1 September (Pathways in aged care: do people follow recommendations?) by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) examines whether people follow recommendations from these assessments.

This report looks at the care pathways taken by people in the two years after their first assessment. The major findings were:

• People who used community care while in their own home were least likely to enter residential aged care. For example, of the people who were approved to move into low-level aged care, 54% of people who had not used community or respite care had moved into care within 6 months but only 26% of those who had used community or respite care had moved.
• Of those people approved for low-level aged care, 16% did not move in within the next two years.

Further analysis is being done to assess the relationships between the use of care services and client demographic and health characteristics.

Aged care advice represents a major opportunity for financial advisers. For details on training workshops in aged care advice refer to the home page of the Strategy Steps website.

Note: This information is based on analysis of the 34,400 people who received ACAT assessments in 2003/04.