Aged care report reveals breaches of human rights in aged care services
1 Dec 2024
Extract from The National Aged Care Advocacy Program Presenting Issues Report for 2023-24 provides valuable insight into the challenges and breaches of human rights experienced by older people receiving aged care services.
In 2023-24, poor communication was the most common service delivery issue raised in contacts with network members and contributed to many cases regarding access to aged care services, in particular understanding available services and engaging a provider. communication issues spanned the entire aged care journey, and included:
- unclear information during contact with My Aged Care
- poor or unprofessional communication by frontline workers and management
- unclear, or a complete lack of, communication by providers about fees and charges
- a lack of, or inconsistent, communication by providers about service availability and the rostering of frontline workers.
Aged care rights
The presenting issues from the Older Person Advocacy Network members casework in 2023-24 highlighted a pressing need for enforceable human rights in aged care. A range of day-to-day breaches were identified, suggesting fundamental ageist and ableist beliefs persist throughout the aged care service system.
In particular, poor communication by My Aged Care, aged care assessors and aged care providers continues to contribute to older people not having their right to be informed and make decisions about their care and services upheld.
Investment in training for frontline aged care staff in the new rights-based approach to aged care, assessment and complaints will be required to operationalise rights in aged care practice and for the culture shift desired by a rights-based approach to be realised.
The full report is available at the OPAN website opan.org.au/information/publications-and-reports
COTA NT’s Aged Care Navigator, Janet Brown, is available to assist older people to understand how the aged care system works and if necessary provide appropriate referrals.