Royal Commission into Aged Care – Recommendation for Young People With a Disability in Aged Care
Recommendation 74
Recommendation 74: No younger people in residential aged care
The Australian Government should immediately put in place the means to achieve,
and to monitor and report on progress towards, the commitments announced by
the Australian Prime Minister on 25 November 2019 to ensure that:
a. no person under the age of 65 years enters residential aged care from 1 January 2022
b. no person under the age of 45 years lives in residential aged care from1 January 2022
c. no person under the age of 65 years lives in residential aged care from 1 January 2025
by:
d. referring for assessment by the agency most appropriate for the assessment of the person concerned, such as the National Disability I InsuranceAgency, and not an Aged Care Assessment Team or Aged Care Assessment Service, any younger person who is at risk of enteringr residentialaged care
e. developing hospital discharge protocols with State and Territory Governments to prevent discharge into residential aged care of any younger person
f. developing, funding and implementing with State and Territory Governments programs for short-term and long-term accommodationa and care options for any younger person who is:
i. living in or at risk of entering residential aged care and
ii. not eligible to be a participant in the National Disability Insurance Scheme
g. requiring the National Disability Insurance Agency to publish an annual Specialist Disability Accommodation National Plan setting out, among other things, priority locations and proposed responses to thin or underdeveloped markets
h. providing directly for, where appropriate and necessary, accommodation in the Specialist Disability Accommodation market, particularly in thin or underdeveloped markets
i. funding dedicated and individualised advocacy services for younger people who are living in, or at risk of entering, residential aged care
j. collecting data on an ongoing basis, and publishing up-to-date collected data each quarter, on, for each State and Territory, the number of younger people living in residential aged care and, among other things:
i. their age ranges
ii. the average length of time in residential aged care
iii. the numbers of admissions into and discharges from residential aged care, and
iv. the reasons for younger people exiting from residential aged care,such as death, turning 65 years or moving into the community
k. having the responsible Minister report to the Parliament every six months about progress towards achieving the announced commitments, and
l. ensuring that a younger person will only ever live in residential aged care if it is in the demonstrable best interests of the particular person (and is independently certified to be such by someone with suitable skills, experience, training and knowledge of the person) in limited and exceptional circumstances such as, for instance, where:
i. the person will turn 65 years within a short period of time, being no more than three months, after entering into residential aged care
ii. the person’s close relatives over 65 years live in a residential aged care facility and the person would suffer serious hardship on being separated from those relatives
iii. an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person between the age of 50 and 64 years elects to live in residential aged care.
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