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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 1988 ..

provided in their preferred environments, maximising the use of natural support that individuals have in their lives, should be a priority. Respite care is obviously one way to achieve this. It is disappointing that we have not yet seen a plan to increase the capacity of respite services to meet the need for more respite services. In the budget there is a commitment of about $200,000 per year for the implementation of the carer’s policy, which is good, but it should be accompanied by real funding for respite services. Young people with disabilities still face limited options in finding suitable accommodation in the ACT. There are not very many options for them to move out of their parental home, simply because many housing options provided by community groups have long waiting lists.

On the question of aged care, initiatives around mental health are welcomed, in particular suicide prevention—an issue for older men, according to COTA—and the sub-acute facility also. Affordable housing is still an area that needs attention, with some pensioners spending 60 per cent of their income on rents. There is also the need to provide incentives for older people to move into appropriate housing. The provision of aged care beds is also still an issue, with COTA claiming that, if people who are inappropriately in hospital beds were relocated to aged care facilities, $16 million would be saved. I think there are some broader issues in this debate, though.

There really needs to be an analysis of who is in aged care facilities, whether lower entry category people could be supported at home and why we continue to pursue the institutional model in aged care when in every other area it is regarded as inappropriate and not good practice. Can we better identify natural support systems and have aged care support tailored to meet individual needs? There are interesting examples of creative thinking in this area in other places, such as Homestay in New South Wales, where students who are struggling to pay rent in Sydney can live in the home of an older person and in return provide support or even just company. There are, of course, economic arguments as well as social arguments to pursue these alternatives. There is also the potential to creatively address the issue of long-term unemployment of older people, with labour market undersupply being harnessed to the skills of older people.

I have missed things but I am sure no-one will mind. I have not had time to put any more together at this point. I want to make some more general comments about the budget layout. It is frustrating to again have changing measures. It is difficult to keep track of changes over time if measures keep on changing. Again, I have to point out problems with the quality of measures. I am looking for a link between quality of outcomes for the people or the environment or whatever is going to be affected and the measure. For example, within Health and Community Care, output 1.2 for mental health supported accommodation places on page 157 of Budget Paper No 4, the measure of ‘places’, with a target of 116, has been changed to ‘bed occupancy’, with a target of 95 per cent.

I am happy to hear an explanation of this if it is different, but from reading it and trying to understand what this new measure is about, taking the occupancy target on face value, 95 per cent is a high target because there is in supported accommodation some necessary time between people and lack of predictability. Let us look at what these two measures tell us. The old measure, of the number of beds, was at least a quantity that could, with some additional research, be linked to the number of people who are accessing the service, whatever the need might be. The occupancy rate is not at all useful. It gives no

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