Speak Out April 2021

POLICY & ADVOCACY

Aged care

Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety

The final report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was publicly released on Monday 1 March, with 148 recommendations made by the Commissioners to enact broad sweeping reform of a sector that was found to be providing substandard care and “neglect” to a large proportion of older Australians. Throughout the course of the Royal Commission, SPA submitted five formal submissions, and contributed to in-person attendances at hearings including those by Allied Health Professions Australia and the Australian Physiotherapy Association. The Association continues to be actively involved in various Department of Health initiatives, such as the National Congress on Food, Nutrition and Mealtime Experience outlined below, that have been set up to start to address some of the key issues identified by the Royal Commission. The sector now awaits the response of the Australian Government, to see which of the Royal Commission’s recommendations will be implemented. Recommendations were too numerous to totally cover here but included the following key themes: Greater access to allied health including speech pathology for older people, regardless of whether they live at home or residential aged care The Association warmly welcomes that the Commissioners have listened to our key message of equity of access to services based on clinical need and not location, and specifically recognised in their report that access to

speech pathology services is currently inadequate and there is a need to enhance this access.

Access to allied health has been described within the final recommendations in a number of ways including:

• Rec 58 (by 1/1/22) : Local hospital network-led multidisciplinary outreach teams, including core specialists ( e.g., geriatricians, psychogeriatricians, palliative care specialists), allied health, nurse practitioners (and escalation to call in other specialists as needed) to provide services for people living in residential aged care or at home, their family members and staff members. This recommendation states this should specifically include services for “proactive care and rehabilitation” and “skills transfer for staff working in aged care”. • Rec 38 (by 1/7/24): “residential aged care to include allied health care” – all residential aged care providers to employ or retain a team of allied health staff that includes a speech pathologist. A specific “blended” funding model for allied health has been proposed to enable this to occur, with much stricter reporting requirements of what type and amount of allied health services are then provided. • Rec 36 (by 1/7/24): “care at home to include allied health care” – care at home services (which will include

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Speak Out | April 2021