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ACFI changes prevent entry into aged care hostels

Elderly people are being turned away from aged care hostels, even when vacancies exist, because it is no longer financially viable to care for them, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald by Adele Horin.

Her report says church and charities that run most of Australia’s aged care hostels say recent changes in federal funding make it uneconomic to admit elderly people, unless they have significant care needs.

“People who normally would have come into low residential care (hostels), are being rejected by organisations from a financial position; they do not bring in enough Government recurrent funds,” said Jill Pretty, the chief executive of the Aged and Community Services Association of NSW and ACT.

The reforms, which took effect in March, introduced a new way to assess the level of resident needs, as well as a new funding formula.  It pays less than $20 a day or even nothing, to care for hostel residents with low care needs, and a higher maximum subsidy than before, of $56.22 a day.

Elderly people who may be isolated, sick and frail, and feel unsafe at home, are being turned away if they are relatively mobile.

Even if they are assessed by a Government aged care assessment team as eligible for hostel level care, church and charities are knocking some back.

Ms Pretty said the organisations had to consider their long term viability, before they admitted people who qualified for the lowest level of recurrent federal funding, or none at all.

“Church organisations are struggling with their mission statements, and not everyone is rejecting these applicants,” Ms Pretty said.

“But the consideration is; will we be here in five years’ time if we do take them?”

People who could afford to pay a big accommodation bond to get into a hostel were likely to get more favourable consideration, service providers said. The interest on the bond might compensate for the lack of funding.

Paul Sadler, the chief executive officer of Presbyterian Aged Care, said, “We have been forced to say to some individuals: You are really not dependent enough to take you in.  We have been saying to our managers: You have to be cautious.'”

The federal reform is designed to restrict residential facilities to people with higher care needs, and end the use of hostels as a form of social housing.

Aged care providers broadly support the Government’s reforms, and many plan to service more people in their homes than in aged care residences, within five years.

But they are concerned affordable housing and Government funded community based care are not keeping pace with the growing numbers of vulnerable people at home.

A spokeswoman for the Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliot, said independent modelling by Access Economics, before the introduction of the reforms, indicated that most aged care homes were expected to have higher total care subsidies between 2008 and 2012.

“There should be no need for most residential care providers to be making drastic changes to their intake practices,” she said.

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