Page 3049 - Week 08 - Thursday, 15 August 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
utilities concession covers electricity, natural gas, water and sewerage and is available to eligible residents of ACT caravan parks and retirement villages with embedded electricity networks. From 1 July this year the utilities concession increased by $46 to $700 a year.
The pensioner duty concession scheme has been extended to 30 June 2020. This scheme assists eligible pensioners to move to accommodation that is better suited to their needs by charging a concessional rate of conveyancing duty.
In recent years the challenging problem of elder abuse has emerged as an issue for older Canberrans, and the ACT government has responded. We have provided $640,000 over four years to fund a seniors rights service in Legal Aid called OPALS, the Older Persons ACT Legal Service. OPALS provides specialist legal services for older people in the ACT who are experiencing or are vulnerable to elder abuse, which can come in many forms. The support that seniors can receive from Legal Aid through the OPALS program will assist them to know their rights, point them to additional specialist services should they need them and give them expert legal advice if required.
Elder abuse is insidious and it can rob older Canberrans of quality of life in their later years. OPALS is just one of the ways that we are seeking to combat it. We are also working with our cross-jurisdictional colleagues to implement the national plan to respond to the abuse of older Australians. Under the national plan we are strengthening service responses, improving safeguards for vulnerable people and older adults, and increasing community awareness and access to information.
In the 2019-20 budget we are also funding better health care in the community in places where and when people need it. We are boosting acute service delivery by the expansion of front-line services at the Canberra Hospital, which includes additional allied and nursing staff for aged care. We have increased the life support rebate by five per cent in 2019-20, bringing the annual payment to $128 a year. This rebate provides help with electricity bills for eligible Canberrans who need electrically operated life support equipment at home to treat a life-threatening condition.
We are strengthening home-based care for older Canberrans. The geriatric rapid acute care evaluation service, GRACE, makes it easier for older people in residential aged-care facilities to avoid unnecessary hospital visits by providing them with free treatment in a place that they are familiar with.
We are also investing further in palliative care. The ACT government will facilitate the expansion to Clare Holland House being funded by the Australian government and the Snow Foundation, and invest $1.7 million to improve the palliative and end-of-life care coordination of people living in residential aged-care facilities. Senior Canberrans can also search for the “find our ACT health service” webpage. It includes up-to-date information about aged-care health services in Canberra and the surrounding region.
In city services, the age-friendly suburbs program shows the government’s commitment to improving path network infrastructure and connectivity in suburbs that include a large proportion of residents aged over 55 years, as well as aged-care
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video