11 million meals delivered through HACC

The Department of Health and Ageing has released this compilation of statistics describing Home and Community Care (HACC) services provided by around 3,000 agencies in 2007-08.

The number of individual clients reported as receiving HACC services rose by about 30,000 to 831,500 in 2007-08, or 3.9% of the total Australian population.

A total of 59% of clients lived in major cities and nearly 40% in regional areas. A further 77% of HACC clients were aged 65 and over and two-thirds were female.

Almost one in five clients were over 80 years old and 28% were born outside Australia.

Around 15% were provided with client care coordination and 7% of clients were provided with case management. Just under a third of clients were provided with domestic assistance accounting for 8 million hours of assistance, 18% with transport (4.9 million single trips), 13% were provided with meals at home (11 million meals), and 6% with meals provided at a centre (1.4 million meals).

Nursing care at home was provided to 20% of clients accounting for 2.5 million hours of care. Allied health care was provided to around a quarter of all clients (1.1 million hours).