The loneliness of illness and aging can be emotionally debilitating. The isolation, the fear, the reduced intimacy; sharing a room with a stranger in a nursing home, then being made to eat at a table full of strangers, in a huge room full of more strangers. Having someone undress you and put you to bed, or tell you when to do it. Someone to tell you what to do, and when to do it. Then if you aren’t quick enough, they take over and do it for you, don’t bother to ask you anymore to fend for yourself. The loneliness, the boredom many of the aged and ill must feel is surely more debilitating than any disease could ever be. The loss of dignity, the humiliation of being treated like a child, made to wear nappies, to get up when it suits someone else, after decades of years of making your own decisions. The loss of friends to disease and death, the loss of your partner and home, all part of a deep grief that must lay below the surface of most elderly. What must it be like for my 56 year old friend, who now has to live in aged care, in a high care area, because there is no age appropriate residential care facility available in the city in which he lives. In fact, there is only 1 site (to my knowledge) in the whole of Australia that has age appropriate residential care for under 65 year olds. The system stinks. If you are over 50, technically you don’t qualify for assisted care. If you are under 65, theoretically you don’t qualify for assisted care within the aged care system.  Where the hell are you supposed to live if you are too sick or disabled to look after yourself? Aged care is all there is, and it is very costly and difficult to access under the age of 65.

Recently in Australia the Federal Government introduced a large Aged Care Reform package. On the surface it sounded reasonable, but the more I read about it the more I wonder about the intent. They claim over the next 5 years the aged care sector will receive a $3.7 billion dollar injection of funding. Only $577 million of this will be new funding, and the rest it seems will be raised through means testing in-home care and aged care eligibility for older Australians, as well as removing $1.6 billion in subsidies paid to residential facilities for high care service provision. It is moving closer to user pays, and whilst this reform is hoping to address the issues of nursing homes who rort the system, it seems the government’s intention is also to rort hard-working, previously tax paying older Australians. With associations like The Council of Ageing condoning the plan to allow the elderly to borrow up to $60,000 against their homes, to pay for the increasing cost of their care, it appears the user pay system is well and truly on its way. It says there is extra funding for dementia, but I’ve yet to work exactly where this money will be spent, another lot of homework for future blog! I once had a plan to jointly purchase a group of small units with a number of other like-minded friends, jointly purchasing one of the units to retain as an apartment for a carer or nurse, and provide my [our] own aged care. It is I believe a plan with merit, and one where I would have the final say about my own care and life, the type of care the aged care system simply does not allow or encourage. The catering to the masses goes on, and the person centred care of individuals continues to be ignored. Where is the funding to allow the increase of staff to resident ratios, and improved wages to retain the truly dedicated carers and nurses to provide improved person centred care? I have not been able to find any in this reform package yet!