Canadian Home Care Priorities for Seniors: What Can We Learn From Australia? Your questions answered

In May, our international webinar, Canadian Home Care Priorities for Seniors: What Can We Learn From Australia?, sparked many more questions than we were able to answer in one hour, so we asked our panelists to address your questions directly.

Here, one of our panelists, Jeff Fiebig, Manager of Program Development with the ACH Group in Adelaide, answers your question about home care packages in Australia.

If you want to see all the answers from all three panelists, or the presentations from the webinar, click here.

Q. Can you elaborate on the Australian home care packages - are these based on funding/services/functionality?

A: Current access to all “higher level” services is loosely based on individual functionality, a rationed system of places (114 places per 1000 of population aged 70 plus)along with capitation grants for some services (low level HACC services, socialisation etc). Here is the best description of the current system.
Under the Living Longer, Living Better Reforms there is proposed:

• Common entry levels between Residential and Community Care
• Common means testing and fees
• A universal approach to quality, standards, and more.