Page 3176 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 October 2022
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upgrading the IT equipment software and skills that enable them to better support their clients and members, and increasing access to digital technology for those members of our community who are most at risk of digital exclusion. We have known for many years that our NGOs often do not have the capital to pay for the upgrades they need to deliver services and support the community in the increasingly online world, which is why we provided $487,000 this year, as we did last year, through technology upgrade fund grants, to support our community.
Our unpaid carers for people with disability and the elderly, and kinship carers for children in out-of-home care, took on additional work during COVID-19. Our carers need care too. This week, 16 to 22 October, is Carers Week. This budget includes funding of $825,000 over four years for the second action plan in the ACT Carers Strategy 2018-2028. The carers strategy, led by the Carers Strategy Governance Group and co-chaired by the CEO of Carers ACT, will focus on actions in the second action plan covering recognition, education, information access, ongoing carer engagement and enhanced support services.
It will be a carer-led process, co-designed with the community sector and carers to enable a carers strategy vision, a community that cares for carers and the people they care for. Funding will resource peer-to-peer mentoring and support. Carers will be matched with individuals with lived experience and organisations with expertise in working with young carers, culturally and linguistically diverse carers, older carers and carers for people with disability.
Carers strategy funding will also support policy work in the community that advocates to remove barriers for carers in accessing the necessities of daily living and supports for their own wellbeing. In 2022-23 the carers strategy funding will also produce a carer respite options handbook. The handbook will focus on identifying ways that carers can seek respite in their day-to-day activities, developing resilience that is not dependent on accommodation services.
Caring for carers is also caring for older Canberrans. One in nine Australians provide care to an older person and one in five women aged 65 to 74 years old are carers. Housing affordability has a real impact on mental wellbeing, which is why the Office for Mental Health and Wellbeing have included in the older person’s mental health and wellbeing strategy that they will explore the experience of older women with homelessness, and the drivers of homelessness in older women. More than 37 per cent of people living in public housing in Australia are over 55 years old. This is why the continued funding for the growth and renewal of public housing stock and the allocation of a further $57.3 million in this budget to undertake additional housing repairs and maintenance to maintain additional public housing stock is so important.
Work continues, in alignment with the age-friendly city plan, to make our city more accessible and inclusive for Canberrans as they grow older, supporting their health and wellbeing and that sense of connection and belonging that is so important for mental wellbeing. The government is investing $1.75 million in this budget, with funding into the forward estimates, to continue the age-friendly suburbs capital works program, with upgrades in Reid, Scullin, O’Connor and Chifley, informed by the input of older residents.
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