The rights of aged care users and workers must become central to the aged care system. These rights must be grounded in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. These rights must be available without discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion or any other personal characteristics; and where appropriate special protections should be made to ensure that the rights of minority groups are respected.
Recommendations made for the principles of the new aged care system.
A safe, high quality and sustainable aged care system is dependent on the workforce that delivers care. This submission focuses on measures that will enable the aged care workforce to grow and to adapt continuously.
There are currently over 128,500 people waiting for home care packages in Australia, with average wait times of between 6 to 9 months (Department of Health, 2018b). Responding to the ongoing growth in demand for home care packages through the piecemeal increases in funded places does not provide women requiring care or providing informal care support with the certainty of support they require.
The National Foundation of Australian Women, NFAW, is a non-politically aligned feminist organisation committed to examining the potentially differential impact of policies and their outcomes for men and women and whether the consequences of policies, intended or unintended adversely affect women. ,The aged care workforce is an area of major policy interest to NFAW on four grounds.
We greatly regret that this Review does not encompass payments for sole parents, as we consider that some of the Welfare to Work changes have been particularly disadvantageous to sole parents and their capacity to be successful or even adequate parents.
Background to Individual Budgets - Longstanding commitment to flexible, person-centred care in policy from 1980s. Existing development of direct payments, but low take up by older people.
NPEC was formed in 1988 to address the issue of unequal earnings for men and women in Australia, over the working week, over the years of workforce participation, and over a lifetime. Its activities include publicity, education, lobbying of governments, State and Federal, and regular representations to industrial tribunals and government inquiries on all issues relating to women’s earnings and workforce participation.
