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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-02-13 Daily Xml
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AGED-CARE FACILITIES

The Hon. SANDRA KANCK (16:06): It is concerning to observe that high-care residential aged-care facilities in South Australia are more likely than those in other states to be operating under sanctions. According to the nursing home accreditation website of the federal Department of Health and Ageing this week, of the eight states and territories, only four had sanctions, and two of these were in South Australia. Fortunately, this is fewer than in October last year, when we had five.

These facilities are home for the most vulnerable people in our community: the frail aged. Most elderly people live in their own homes and will never live in a nursing home but, for those who do, we should provide the highest possible standard of care. Other states can come through the commonwealth accreditation process without sanctions, so it should sound alarm bells that South Australia cannot do so. Staffing levels appear to be too low to allow for the human touch of care (that is a funny concept in a nursing care place!) in aged-care facilities.

Recently, my office heard about an elderly gentleman living with dementia in a nursing home. His family reported that, on a number of occasions when it came time for them to leave, they would search around for a staff member to assist him back to his room and find none. They talked to other residents, who also reported having difficulty in attracting the attention of staff. For some, obtaining assistance to get to a toilet became an excruciating experience, without being able to get staff assistance. The wife of a resident from another facility contacted my office and said:

There are quite a few nursing homes that have the look of 'money making machines', in that there is very little provision of adequate leisure space within and not enough garden areas for residents to easily access and/or view.

Staffing levels which do not allow for the proper care of residents have an impact on staff morale, on retention of staff and reliance on agency staff. Imagine what it does to the residents! We should be encouraging and assisting people who have complaints about nursing homes to formalise them, so that standards can be maintained until these institutions are consistently beyond reproach.

In 2005, I introduced into this place a human rights monitors bill. Sadly, it lapsed, although the feeling that legislation of this kind is needed was expressed to me by honourable members. The effect of such legislation would be to allow trained people to conduct spot and random checks on facilities, paying particular attention to the rights of residents.

In the absence of a bill of rights and a clean sheet from the aged-care standards and accreditation agency, there remains a need for human rights monitors. When I hear that even a government-operated facility is failing accreditation, I have to ask: what is going on in our aged-care system? South Australia has to get on top of this issue, and we need to do it quickly, as we have the fastest ageing population of all the states.

In the process there is the potential to create models for others to follow, as well as to pick up on world's best practice. For instance, we could establish a teaching nursing home in order to promote aged-care nursing as a specialty. Another innovation could be the use of the Snoezelen therapy rooms for nursing home residents in order to reduce depression and anxiety, particularly in dementia patients.

Attracting, training and retaining quality staff in aged care requires a sign of commitment from the state government. I suggest that we add a target to the State Strategic Plan that 'no South Australian nursing home will have sanctions applied to it'; then we could set about creating 'the state of graceful ageing'. Some baby boomers like to skite about growing old disgracefully, but no-one wants to see poor conditions for residents of nursing homes. We, especially, must not allow the staff to patient ratio to fall victim to the profit-driven corporatised aged-care sector.

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