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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Thursday, 19 August 2004) . . Page.. 3900 ..

The Standing Committee on Health decided to look at the needs of residents of aged care facilities after hearing reports that some of these residents were unable to access allied health care that would otherwise prolong, and enhance the quality of, life.

Regular allied health care services become more essential for the aged. For example, speech pathology can help prevent aspiration pneumonia, regular dental treatment can pre-empt emergencies and reduce suffering, regular podiatry treatment can increase mobility, and so the list goes on. Simple things like a regular visit to the dentist or podiatrist, which most of us take for granted, become increasingly difficult for residents of aged care facilities or those receiving care at home.

Not only are allied health care services often prohibitively expensive for elderly people on a fixed low income, but also for those people with any form of mobility restriction the cost and the time consideration of transport further limits access to services. One submission reported residents spending over $80 to attend hospital appointments. For those needing regular services, such as dialysis, there is a need to rely on family and friends. For carers seeking respite, the lack of a coordinated transport scheme means that any benefit of respite is lessened as they continue to provide this care.

The committee heard that residents might have no more than $30 in disposable income after meeting ordinary living expenses. It is unreasonable to expect that this should then be spent on essential allied health care or transport. It is clearly not adequate for those expenses anyway. The committee was also concerned about the reports of retribution in aged care facilities and has recommended that this is a matter for the government to investigate as a matter of priority.

There is a fundamental lack of communication and coordination of available services. The majority of submissions to this inquiry expressed the same issues—older people receiving care cannot afford to pay for allied health services and, even when they can, the lack of transport is the prohibitive factor.

The committee was concerned about the brevity of the government’s submission to this inquiry. I know that we did not have a lot of time. It was not so much the brevity that was of concern; it was really the fact that the submission lacked a comprehensive analysis of the issues so that the committee could have an understanding of the perspective of government on these issues, and the health care needs of older people is obviously a really important issue.

Therefore, while there were a number of recommendations the committee could have made, it is of the opinion that the government needs to undertake considerable work itself in this area. The committee has recommended, first, that the government undertake a survey to determine what allied health care services are available and, second, that the government develop an older persons health action plan aimed at improving the accessibility of allied health care services. The current availability of services is clearly not adequate and more work needs to be undertaken in this area.

The report is fairly short and to the point because we did not have time, as I said, to go into a broad, wide-ranging inquiry and take many submissions, et cetera, but submissions came in of a very high quality from groups in the community which have an

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