Workers in the mostly privatised aged-care system face chronic understaffing and substandard pay, while aged care providers cry poor to justify their cost cutting. Ben Radford reports.
aged care
Twenty three Victorian councils have already, or are intending to, privatise their aged-care service since the federal government changed its funding model. Kerry Smith reports.
Aged people are being discriminated against in homes with inadequate staff-to-patient ratios, reports Jack Williams.
Socialist Alliance candidate Sue Bull says the federal government hand-out to aged care workers won’t solve the mounting pandemic death toll among the aged. Sarah Hathway reports.
The corporate media is giving the federal government’s latest budget a big thumbs up, despite its brazen hand-outs for billionaires and big corporations, writes Alex Bainbridge.
Overwhelmed nurses, carers, elderly residents and their families have exposed that a root cause of so much of the neglect in private centres is understaffing. Jim McIlroy reports.
Any hopes raised by former prime minister Paul Keating's appearance at the royal commission into aged care were dashed by his advocacy of a user-pays system, writes Suzanne James.
The tragedy for the coronavirus victims in aged care could have been avoided, or greatly reduced, if authorities had implemented early calls for radical reforms to the very sick health system, writes George Zangalis.
Moreland councillor Sue Bolton has added her voice to calls for safe work conditions for aged care workers as the pandemic hits the most vulnerable. Chloe DS and Darren Saffin report.
Aged care home Newmarch House has become the new epicentre of COVID-19 in New South Wales. Jim McIlroy reports how privatisation and deregulation of aged care has contributed to the neglect.
In October last year, the federal government finally established a royal commission into aged care, after a Senate inquiry received numerous complaints among its 5000 submissions. The deep-seated problems included poor standards of care, physical assaults and extremely challenging working conditions.
The disastrous results of privatisation, outsourcing and deregulation in the aged care sector have been further exposed in the commission’s report. The aged care system, along with health care in general, should instead be placed under public ownership and control, and made accessible to the whole community.
The disaster at the Earle Haven Retirement Village is a particularly shocking example of how already vulnerable people are treated in a system geared to making money, writes Michael McDonald.
Prominent Aboriginal elder Wayne Wharton is making a tilt for the senate in Queensland this election, campaigning on issues such as justice for Aboriginal people, justice reinvestment and an improved aged care system.
Wharton told Green Left Weekly: “The systems that we’ve had for the last 230 years is broken, they’re useless.”
These include the legal system which, he says, is based on a “feudal system of punishment” instead of rehabilitation, and the two-party system, in which the big parties have become dominated by “top-end-of-town corruption”.
The aged care sector should be publicly run, adequately funded and with a high standard of living, says the Victorian Socialists. The current problem is not market failure. The problem is the market itself.
About 500 members of the Health Services Union (HSU), United Voice, NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) and other unions gathered in Hyde Park on April 19 to "Rally for Respect: Time to Care for Aged Care."
Speakers represented the various health sector unions, as well as UnionsNSW, and Labor federal and state politicians.
Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition government has cut billions of dollars from the aged care sector. This has had an enormous impact on the lives of older Australians in care, their families and those who care for them.
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