Australians have a “very negative” view of life in residential aged care, according to two new research papers prepared by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.
The community believes residents living in residential aged care are “often lonely”, do not have control over their lives, and are unhappy, the papers say.
Many also told researchers staff were “overstretched, underpaid and frequently insufficiently trained”.
Others said the food was poor quality.
“Many people were adamant that they did not want to spend their older age in a residential aged care facility,” one report states.
The two papers are based on a national survey of over 10,000 adults by Roy Morgan conducted between October 2019 to January 2020 and a large study by Ipsos involving 35 focus groups and 30 in-depth interviews conducted between July and September 2019.
Respondents used words such as ‘depressing’, ‘clinical’, ‘drab’, ‘bleak’, ‘scary’ and ‘overcrowded’. They said residents were sometimes “mistreated” and that facilities “smelt of urine”.
The papers show that 80 per cent of older Australians have a strong preference to stay living in their own home should they ever need support.
Despite the negative views on aged care, adults had an overwhelmingly positive view of older people (those aged 70 and over). More than 90 per cent of respondents agreed that older Australians have value that includes their work, knowledge and experience, and time spent volunteering to families and communities.
Almost all agreed that society has an obligation to look after older people and care for them.
The survey respondents told the researchers about their experiences of the aged care system. Many had visited friends or loved ones living in residential care and their thoughts were based on these experiences.
One respondent said, “My grandfather was in a nursing home… and as soon as he got in there, downhill… they fed him mush… he tripped in the shower, they didn’t care.”
Another said, “My experiences have been that the facilities are pretty grim – it feels like a place you go to when there’s nowhere left to go… just a bit depressing – it’s hospital-like, clinical, grey, quite outdated, smell… lonely.”
“I was totally appalled… patients wetting themselves because no-one was coming… in my mother’s case, in her room, she was dying and the number of blow flies in the room and no-one bothered to spray them. It was pretty horrendous,” another said. “As we walked in, I was absolutely shocked with the amount of faeces we saw.”
A consistent theme of the feedback was that there were not enough staff and they were not appropriately trained.
“They do not have enough people on the ground in most (aged care) facilities to deal with the normal people, let alone people with issues. That is my biggest concern… under-resourced… people who are trained properly… As a nurse, I had to do three years training. They stick these kids into aged care facilities with how many months of training?” one respondent said.
“Need more staff qualified to deal with dementia people. And more trained male staff to deal with troublesome residents,” one respondent observed.
Others felt the difficulty of the tasks performed by nurses and care workers were not sufficiently reflected in their remuneration, and that this could contribute to a poor level of care.
“The pay’s not good … I just type all day and I get paid pretty well, compared to nurses to have a harder job and don’t get paid as well,” one said.
“It’s a shitty job and nobody really wants to do it. It attracts people who aren’t very good,” another said.
While some respondents said the food was “restaurant standard”, many lamented the quality of food in aged care and said it was limited by funding constraints.
The food was considered unappetising, lacking in nutritional content, and “mushy”. Some expressed frustration that loved ones were not able to bring food into the home.
One respondent said, “I used to work in one when my daughter was three months old. She’s now 53 years old and nothing has changed. Their food is disgusting, and if I take (my mother) food, it has to go on the counter for everyone to share… I wasn’t allowed to give it to her.”
“Nutritional level is poor, everyone gets the same meal… they don’t change the menu, they stick to the menu ‘cos that’s what they can afford to pay out,” another said.
Some respondents had positive experiences of aged care.
“The health care provided was great… She was very independent still, couldn’t complain about anything. It was cheap,” one said.
“She loved it, she made friends there,” another told the researchers.
Older Australians living in their own homes tended to have a positive view of their lives, the researchers found.
More than 90 per cent of respondents said they were healthy and able to take care of themselves. And 85 per cent said they were still physically able to do the things they liked to do. More than three-quarters said they had enough money to live comfortably.
Many respondents knew very little about Australia’s aged care system.
Only 9 per cent new about My Aged Care and only 4 per cent knew about the regulator, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.
The fact that the Australian community knows so little about the aged care system could perhaps explain why so little has been done to fix the system over the last 20 years, despite a multitude of reviews and known, obvious problems.
Both research papers are available on the Royal Commission’s website.
I find Caroline Egans articles fresh and interesting. She is professional. She also needs to give a balanced view into age care. I loved working in age care and I genuinely cared about the residents. I worked in a good team and we ran a clean, comfortable business. I did not see feces lying around and the place did not smell of urine. It was clean and the residents were happy. However the place I did my training in was a sad smelly nightmare. I won’t go into details as I’m bound by confidentiality. I wouldn’t put a dog in there. The carers went outside every ten minutes for a fag. I did not see carers having conversations with clients. The poor inmates would sit and stare into space. At the place where I worked I couldn’t wait to have afternoon tea with the residents and they would talk and laugh and looked like they had a life worth living. I think age care is different where ever you go.
Oh my. With all the information and mostly bad and nothing has changed in years. Richard Colbeck is no better than Ken Wyatt. It seems our governments don’t want to spend the money fixing the problems. All the money they found for Corona Virus and job keeper etc etc astounds me! So sick of the elderly and anyone over 50 being discriminated against. So sick of the commercials advertising over 50’s retirement resorts and villages. So sick of hearing adverts for funeral homes wanting their money up front incase you die. Sick of hearing that our Super will not be enough when the time comes. ALL DOOM AND GLOOM! We are all working to pay for our inevitable old age when our families dump us into other people’s care. Sick of all the big boys out there scaring us all silly and taking all our money before we are anywhere near dead! Governments need to take over. We all need to pay higher taxes for our old age and they need to rip those tall story flash aged care facilities down and start all over. It seems that there is a notion anyone over 50 should be hidden in buildings for the old. Out of sight out of mind. So sick to death of this money grab and discrimination of our 50’s and older.
Why do we hide the elderly and disabled? Why do we place them under one umbrella where the average person never sees them? Things need to change so humans are never disassociated from mainstream society. We need to look at allowing society to walk through aged care places as if it were a more say social place to meet. A place where children can go and play and picnic amongst our elderly and disabled. To become the norm. Not to hide them away from society where they become akin to prisoners or phsyciatric facilities. If youbthinknanlockdown for Coronavirus is bad think about the every day lives that these people live every day. More interaction with the public needs to happen. That would mean planning a lifestyle for these vulnerable people with shops and hairdressers/ beauty therapists/ takeaway foodnplacesnand gift shops available and made attractive enough for the public to shop there and picnic on open spaces of land where there could be market stalls every Sunday. Think outside the square guys. We should not hide them away from public view.They should be interacting regularly. Nobody should be hidden away because they are of a certain aged or not able to walk properly or have Dementia. It would sure make the proprietors and operators of these big money making machines step up if they were under scrutiny by the public ever day!!