When Gohar Yazdabadi looks at what the Support at Home program has done to older Australians, there is a rawness to her language that sits at odds with her corporate title.
It sounds less like the assessment of a peak body CEO and more like the words of a frustrated family member who has lived through the system’s failures first-hand, because that is precisely what has happened to the current Chief Executive Officer of Council on the Ageing NSW.
“Is this what state-sanctioned elder abuse looks like?” she asks. “I do not suggest that the program was designed with that intention. But intention cannot be the only measure.”
Yazdabadi gave evidence to the Senate Community Affairs References Committee’s inquiry into Support at Home last week. This year, she lost both her parents within two months of each other. Her father died in February while a stranded patient in the NSW hospital system, waiting for home care that never arrived in time. Her mother died two months later.
“Once someone is ready to leave hospital, the care needed to get them home should be treated as urgent,” she says. “Every additional day is a day of their life spent somewhere they no longer need to be… For some people, those become the final days of their lives. It is too late for my father.”
Older people are going without essential care because they can’t navigate a system built to serve them. People already assessed and approved for support who remain on waiting lists regardless. People stranded in hospital. People who die waiting.
“Once those consequences are known, continuing with the same settings becomes a conscious policy choice,” she says. “Decision-makers must accept responsibility for the foreseeable harm that follows. At what point does knowingly allowing older people to remain without essential care become institutional neglect?”
Professor Kathy Eager, who advised the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, gave evidence to the same inquiry that the Department, “developed the algorithm in-house and when it’s now making a mistake, it gets to mark its own homework.”
Greens spokesperson for older people, Senator Penny Allman-Payne, said the government “still gave it absolute power over aged care assessments,” adding: “The Department shouldn’t be trusted to check its own homework when it comes to its mistakes, that power should rest with clinical professionals.”
“We are seeing adult children prevent older people from accessing care to preserve an inheritance,” Yazdabadi says. “The older person goes without essential support so that there will be more money left for someone else. That is financial abuse and neglect.”
Partners are restricting a spouse’s home care out of fear of exhausting shared savings needed for future residential care. “That financial fear is translating into one partner denying the other the care they need.”
Council on the Ageing NSW’s own research, surveying more than 2,500 older people using the De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale, found 60 per cent experiencing loneliness, half socially isolated, and a quarter at the most extreme level measured.
“The use of an algorithm to determine funding adds to that loss of trust,” Yazdabadi says, “when people cannot see how the decision reflects their circumstances or how professional judgement can correct an inadequate outcome.”
Allman-Payne put it more bluntly: “The IAT systematically denies essential care to older people, especially those with cognitive issues, mental health conditions and frailty.”
For people already isolated, turning to a system that then fails them “reinforces the feeling that there is no one they can depend on.”
“We need fundamental reform,” Yazdabadi says. “We need to stop and rethink Support at Home altogether, starting with the experiences and outcomes of the people it is supposed to serve.
“If we can see these outcomes clearly and still fail to act, we move closer to a system that accepts the neglect of older people as a consequence of its design.”
As blunt as Yazdabadi’s opinions are, it is refreshing to hear an aged care leader speak this emotively and honestly. The sector needs far more of it, particularly from those who are paid to advocate for seniors.
I agree, with it’s current aged care failings, this government, needs to act fast or it will go down in history as the Government that sanctioned abuse and neglect of older generations.
Gohar Yazdabadi’s family experience is heartbreaking and yet it gives her words the deepest meaning.
She has summed up the key issue succinctly in one sentence – ‘Once those consequences are known, continuing with the same settings becomes a conscious policy choice’.
I am a participant in Support at Home and have zero confidence in the whole system.
Thank you Gohar for speaking out and best wishes.
My husband is 91 assessed at level 5 and awaiting funding
I am 81 not entitled to any financial help whatsoever due to not passing income test.
But no account is taken of the fact that I am elderly too.
I am fully expecting my husband to die before the funding arrives.
How out getting rid of Aged Care facilities and have purpose built estates attached to schools and universities. Then we would have the young seeing and learning about the elderly on a daily basis instead of hiding the reality of aging from society!
People have to wake yp to reality. Stop mindlessly parroting the vertical and coverup languagr fed to us.
Care is a word used as a marketing tool across all industries. It lonh ago lost all credibility. Arguably jo where does its deception do more harm than when perpetrated on the aged.
People have to start using their own honest, factual objective language. They don’t seem to understand that every time they parrot words fed by government they are contrinuting to the coverup and gasligting.
Hallelujah! Someone else actually speaking the truth, thank you Gohar Yazdabadi (and others refusing to be silenced too). It is more than shameful what the government and department have done to recipients of Aged Care, another version of Robodebt! They will definitely go down in histpry as sanctioning harm and abuse. The changes to the NDIS are similarly harmful. Whatever the collective we must do, it is ‘do not get old or become disabled!!!!!’
Recently I was exited from hospital after a life-threatening illness to a small regional hospital far from home and easy access to family support, while waiting for a rehab place. After a week I was sent home on a weekend at very short notice, with no additional support. I receive Support@Home, level 3, but my provider was unable to offer more support as my funding was too low, and the money had already been spent on regular nursing care. At least I had a home to go to, but too well for hospital and too unwell to manage at home.
There were a series of systemic failures, too numerous to detail, and some too private to reveal.
As my need increases, my access to care and support diminishes, and my husband only receives minimum support from CHSP., while his needs also increase. We still wish to age in place, at home, together, but I am far less optimistic – hospital care was good, but transitions poorly orchestrated. I still have a voice, weakened by illness, but however effective advocacy may be on a personal level, it has not been very effective in changing the thought processes of the current government. Aged Care and Disability support need to be prime policy issues for the next Federal election.
Given that this system (aged care assessment) is based on the same systems used by NDIS, it’s no great wonder that it fails miserably!
NDIS and the disability pension both routinely reject the first, and often the second, application for services, leaving people struggling with a small forest worth of paperwork to get desperately need support.
This is a national disgrace! I think it’s high time that our political elite should be REQUIRED to function on the services they legislate.
All aged care advocacy organisations should be calling for a PUBLIC AGED CARE SYSYEM!!?
If a public aged care system is not developed NOW, our public hospitals will substitute for them.
Why are humans only interested in money and themselves.it is to late to wake up now.
Hopefully, these observations will lead to a more equitable outcome for us old folks. But I hold no hope as long as there are life savings in the mix, the Government wants them as much as the providers and families.
This was an unforgivable torment inflicted by a shockingly bad aged “care” programme.
I cannot imagine the grief inflicted. Losing a parent is hard enough – to lose both in such cruel circumstances so unnecessarily inflicted !
I’m grateful to read these trenchant comments from such a senior person in the system.
She can’t be ignored.
There are strong lived-experience advocacy groups who will be happy to add their voices if Ms Yazabadi would find it helpful.
It is unfair to blame one Government for the aged care failings. Why do we have a Census? To inform all elected Gov of future social needs. This includes proposed aged care. I am 5’1 and care for a 6’3 man who suffers from stage 4 Parkinsons. He is approved for nursing home care, but because of his falls, he would spend the rest of his days chair-fast, losing muscle mass. So I struggle to keep him at home for quality of life. I receive one hour of support M – F. With 3 hours of respite on a Wednesday if they have the staff! I am perpetually exhausted but try to meet all his needs each day.
People have to wake yp to reality. Stop mindlessly parroting the vertical and coverup languagr fed to us.
Care is a word used as a marketing tool across all industries. It lonh ago lost all credibility. Arguably jo where does its deception do more harm than when perpetrated on the aged.
People have to start using their own honest, factual objective language. They don’t seem to understand that every time they parrot words fed by government they are contrinuting to the coverup and gasligting.