City to end in-home senior care services

CITY of Greater Bendigo council has voted to stop providing many aged care services in the municipality by mid-next year.

The move came at council’s regular meeting last Monday and world see about 1800 people in the City moved from municipally provided aged care services to a private supplier via the Federal Government’s Support at Home program.

Support at Home was an initiative of the previous Federal Coalition Government and shares a similar service model with the National Disability Insurance Scheme, with seniors picking a private provider and the services they needed, paid for by a bank of cash allocated to their account.

The Support at Home program essentially offered local governments an opportunity to leave the area of in-home service provision for seniors.

City of Greater Bendigo mayor Cr Andrea Metcalf said with changes to the way in-home senior care was funded, the municipality would find it hard to comply with the new system.

“The City currently has a partial monopoly on the local aged care market, however the changes that will be introduced will make it difficult to continue,” she said.

“The SAH program intends to open up the market for aged care providers, making it more competitive and giving clients greater choice about who they access care from.

“This will effectively split our client base. There will also be changes to the payment structure from Federal Government to local government, making it difficult to budget to deliver the service.

“If the City was to continue providing aged care, it would have to expand its service delivery significantly, which would require an investment in new technology and the appointment of a skilled committee to ensure compliance with requirements of the new service.

“Local government originally provided such services because there were no other providers.

“Over the past 30 years, the aged care sector has grown significantly and prompted a change in service delivery to meet the needs of an ageing population.

“This has been a challenging decision and one council has explored for the past six months, it has not been rushed or taken lightly.”

Shortly after coming to power in May this year, the new Labor Federal Government extended funding for local governments to continue providing in-home care services for seniors until mid-2024 and potentially longer.

The move to end such services in the municipality has Federal Member for Bendigo, Lisa Chesters, “concerned”.

“I am very concerned with what will happen to these older and more vulnerable community members,” she said.

“Our council run in-home aged care services are a vital and much-loved service.

“A model set by the market may not offer the same support to clients and we have seen this trend emerge with other councils that have gone down this path.

“My heart goes out to the workers who have found out they will lose their jobs and to the clients they support.

“The previous Liberal Government made the decision to change the funding model for these services.

“This decision is currently under review and current funding arrangements have been extend to 30 June 2024.

“As part of the review process, last Friday I co-chaired a round table with 36 Victorian local governments to provide feedback to the Minister for Aged Care, Anika Wells, and the Federal Government.

“The City of Greater Bendigo was a notable absence.”

When it comes to what services the City of Greater Bendigo would provide for seniors in the future, a statement from the municipality said, “The City will engage with the community in the first half of 2023 to determine how it can continue to support older adults in other ways.

“However, council’s decision is final.”