Alliance-commissioned research on aged care funding and long term financing of the industry will be released in the next few weeks. The whole aged care sector has become obsessed with complaints. Wherever I go people want to talk about complaints. Service providers feel hard done by. The Minister for Aged Care has become the target for anything that goes wrong in the 3000 residential facilities, and older people and their families are worried that their voices are not heard.
Service providers find they are dealing with issues outside the scope and training of their staff.
In a recent discussion I had with some providers they saw complaints from relatives as deriving from the guilt they bear about placing their loved ones in care. The view was that their staff are confronted with angry relatives who do not recognise the emotional cause of their problems lashing out on issues not related to their guilt. So, cold soup becomes a major issue. The overall system has become confused. The Accreditation Agency has been drawn into an investigative role when it was originally intended to assist the industry to upgrade services through continuous improvement.