“The sector is performing and has performed exceptionally well in the work that it’s doing.” Richard Colbeck, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services, February 2, 2022
The COVID death toll in aged care is now heading toward 600 for the year to date. Over 60,000 aged care residents have yet to have a booster shot as infections rise beyond 30,000 across the sector. The joint plea by providers and unions for the ADF to be deployed to alleviate critical staff shortages has been rejected by Scott Morrison.
And a new situation report from the sector warns that we’re not clear on what’s happening in a critical area of aged care, home care.
The report has been prepared by the Australian Aged Care Collaboration, a group formed by the industry’s peak bodies, and shows just how rapidly the tragedy in aged care is evolving — the death toll was 499 on January 31, still up more than a hundred from last weekend, but has since surged over 560 and rising.
On the positive side, the report shows “there has been a significant increase in the number of RATs, masks and face shields delivered in the week to 28 January,” adding, “it is not clear if this is enough to match demand.” Also, “resident vaccination levels in residential care have risen in January to more than 92 per cent.” But:
Workforce shortages remain a critical problem for the sector. Despite revised furloughing rules and a small expansion in surge workforce support (to about 1250 shifts per week), providers report that on average a quarter of shifts (about 140,000 per week in residential care alone) are going unfilled.
Those numbers put in perspective how the government’s insistence there was a “surge workforce” available for the sector was a fiction — it has made only a marginal difference in facilities on a national basis. The report also shows the need for longer-term planning for dealing with future waves: “we need long-term, durable policy solutions that can provide certainty to both providers, workers and older people. There needs to be a transparent process to plan for future COVID-19 waves, including ensuring that supports are part of ongoing programs, rather than ad-hoc measures.”
Worryingly, the report warns that we have little idea of what toll COVID is inflicting in home care — a major component of our aged care system that attracts less coverage because of its non-residential nature. “There is no plausible official data on cases or deaths for clients receiving in-home and community care, with just 18 cases added to official counts in January,” the report says. It makes an attempt to estimate what’s happening in the sub-sector — based on a 27,000-strong sample, it suggests “perhaps 5000 client cases and 12,500 staff cases sector wide.”
By its nature, home care numbers are more reflective of what’s happening in the community than in residential care, and home care providers clearly don’t have the same obligations to their clients as residential facilities. But some of the same issues are in play, particularly staff shortages, infection control protocols for staff and a lack of booster shots. We continue to operate in the dark on the overall impact of the current outbreak on the aged care sector.
The report also takes aim at the government’s attempt to evade responsibility for the mounting death toll by dismissing many of the deaths as of patients in palliative care. Scott Morrison joined Greg Hunt in doing this yesterday. As the report explains, “there is currently no official palliative designation for a person in residential aged care” — only a proposed definition that involves a prognosis of less than three months.
I’ve seen a lot of shabby things from all sides of politics in my time, but Morrison and Hunt trying to wave away hundreds of deaths — usually cut off from their loved ones and spending their last hours alone — because they would have died in a few months anyway is one of the most nauseating things I’ve ever heard. It borders on eugenics.
Crikey will continue to focus on this unfolding horror story. And we feel we owe it the victims and their families that we move beyond the numbers, grisly as they are, and tell the stories of those who have passed and those who continue to suffer in locked-down facilities that can’t find enough staff. We invite readers to send us the stories and pictures of their loved ones in aged care, so that we can give a human face to this public policy disaster.
Would you share with us your stories of loved ones in aged care? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
It is shocking how cavalier Hunt, Colbeck, and Morrison have been about the crisis in aged care. This borders on criminal neglect. Are politicians above the law? I imagine a class action on those three individuals is in order.
You say ‘W C’ “This borders on criminal neglect.” It is! Both criminal neglect conducted on an industrial scale in full and open sight of Australian Nation? An industry that has progressively squeezed out ‘Not for Profit’ Providers. And under Federal Govt sponsorship created and commercialised “care” of aged and disabled Australians. The Federal Govt State employed Regulators who fail to protect. An Australian public embarrassed, that turns the head. The Politicians that deliver highly profitable outcomes to Corporate ‘For Profit’ Service Providers all the way down, down, to casual workforce on the bones of their ….. trying. So hard to deliver. Support families. Under-staffed, Under-payed and over worked.
We need an Election. Not in May, tomorrow! Everyone that knows about this Aged ‘Care’ Industry . . . together; utterly sickened.
Society will always be judged by how it treats minority groups . The liberal government’s treatment of the elderly of this country as a commercial commodity is despicable. It is beneath contempt but clearly demonstrates the morals and ethics of our leaders.
The one bright light in this disgusting period of our history is some liberals have discovered a conscience and are moving to oust the perpetrators.
Classifying the elderly as a minority group might be accurate enough at any one moment, but rather odd when one considers that the elderly eventually includes everyone except those who die young.
Which really ought to ensure this is a problem that almost everybody takes very seriously indeed.
There are just under 5M over 65/elderly, about 16% of our population.
It is the fastest growing cohort – over half (53%) are women.
By the time Boomers are deleted (2066, if not sooner) and they will be a quarter of the population, the Boomers dubious progeny, Gen X – so named because Douglas Copeland meant Yechs, as in profound distaste).
The Bane of the West has been primogeniture, etiolated though it now is to some extent.
For some there is the guerilla SPTKI movement but even they tend to backslide and leave their ungrateful spawn far too much – who, of course, will seethe that it is insufficient.
Entire social strata exist purely (sic!) to service the transfer of wealth from cold, grey hands to warmer, (apparently more worthy) ones.
Why not BLOW your accumulated wealth on dedicated rock’n’roll retirement homes?
Purpose built and properly amortised they would be sources of continuing income for far flung rural areas – the farther the better from their ungrateful and vindictive despoiled brats.
Properly paid, well qualified staff assisted by fit, healthy and nubile carers across the sexual spectrum and an imaginatively stocked pharmacopœia might be welcomed
One could do worse.
Crikey Epimenides do you have your own spawn of the devil? It sounds personal with you! 🙂
Or an older brother who inherited the farm?! 😉
‘The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable.’ Gandhi
thank you for that
What an absolute disgrace and yet Ministers just ignore it because it would be inconvenient to admit it. Then they would be forced to do something about it like getting the military to help with some of the routine tasks like preparing and serving meals. This is just yet another abrogation of government.
And even more galling when pressed about his mistakes, Morrison claimed he regretted not calling in the military for vaccine management. If they could do that, then why not aged care tasks?
It’s simple. They just don’t care.
But he didn’t mean it it was an answer to help himself
A General is the guy for the war stuff everyday logistics great but running a health programme if you are using a General for that, you and ministers and your administration are full of duffers and you are using the military as your shield
Was it Clemenceau who said “War is too important to be left to generals“?
Perhaps government is too important to be left to politicians?
After all, what ARE they? People able to schmooze and tongue bathe others? And that is a ‘good thing’…why exactly?
I have no brief for a technocracy but basic competence would not be unappreciated.
If any of the previous reports had been acted upon or the money directed to aged instead of another report, maybe things would improve.
The Prime Mal-administrator at the Press club said minister Colbeck would take the criticism on the chin. I reckon there’d be a long line of people more than willing to give it to Colbeck on the chin, given half a chance.
It’s the other end of his alimentary canal that needs to be kicked – right out of his job.
And DF, count me in on this one too.
Yes, greynurse, just count me in please!
I suspect the reason that this government is so dismissive of deaths in aged care is because doing something about it would require increasing the workforce in the sector and that requires improving the pay, training and conditions of aged care nurses and carers.
Keep up the great work, BK. The LNP are despicable. Thugs who have shattered the social contract by failing completely to keep safe the citizens who pay for government, including their bloated MP wages. The LNP deserve a bloody shellacking that keeps them out of office for more than a decade for that is how long it will take to repair at least some of the damage done by their immorality. The message we send to these neoliberal, anti-social zealots with their bloodied hands needs to be loud and clear.
And a good Flogging.
Especially this.
The lengths to which ScoMo and Co will go to try to hang on till May are truly appalling.Why isn’t the media as a whole calling them ouT The Coalition is heading down the same path as “the Greased Piglet” in the UK and is attracting a single figure % rate of scrutiny. Shame on the other 91%.