Socio-Political and Health Issues in Aged Care

Running head: SOCIO-POLITICAL AND HEALTH ISSUES IN AGED CARE
Socio-Political and Health Issues in Aged Care
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1SOCIO-POLITICAL AND HEALTH ISSUES IN AGED CARE
The growing ageing population in Australia has resulted in an elevated need for the community
aged services. In order to ensure that the older people receive the services properly, they require
the aged care community services and this service has been reformed to use a consumer-directed
care model. Aged care is one of the fastest growing sectors in Australia and this sector deals with
the significant number of challenges. The facilities around the country have the responsibility of
managing the problems associated with the growing number of the aged population, right skills,
staff sourcing and managing the finances. Policy in the aged care gets frequently changed and is
due to the fast-evolving nature of the sector. The recent policy changes have resulted in the
alteration in the residential care subsidy. The rise in the number of the elderly population
requires a very trained body of workers that will be taking care of the elderly patients. However,
Australia is not prepared to address such an issue. The aged care facilities that are present
throughout the country requires to bring forth greater number of the skilled staff, high levels of
healthcare and attract new residents all within a balanced budget (Myagedcare.gov.au, 2018).
Thesis statement- I think the aged care in Australia requires a redesigned and revamped
consumer-directed care that will be able to address the issues related to the aged care. The
outline of the discussion will include what the consumer-directed care is and it will include the
ethical and the political positions. A critique and discussion of the issue in providing the
consumer-directed care for the care providers and the consumers.
Discussion on the consumer-directed care and the various issues that are occurring
presently and how the consumers and the provider are affected. The consumer-directed care
(CDC) can be described as a model that deals with the delivery of the service that is designed to
provide more choice and control over the types of services that are rendered to the consumers.
The consumers that receive the home care packages will have the more control and access over

2SOCIO-POLITICAL AND HEALTH ISSUES IN AGED CARE
the types of the services and the care along with the choice of how the service will be delivered
to them. CDC can be considered as an approach for the purpose of management and planning of
the care, that allows the carers and the consumers to influence the design and the delivery of the
services that the consumers will receive (Laver et al., 2018). CDC also allows the consumers to
exercise the greater control over what the services are to be delivered, along with when and
where it will be delivered. In the year 2010-2011, the CDC was considered as a model of care
within the home care packages programme. After the success of the initial project, a new form of
the home care packages from the year 1 August 2013 was delivered through the CDC
(Agedcare.health.gov.au, 2018). The issues that are currently being faced by the consumer-
directed care are the several challenges experienced by the informal carers, clients and the staffs.
The staffs started to differentiate the CDC from the tradition aged care services and complained
that previously the clients used to have much more control over the services are delivered. Others
felt that the CDC is directed towards the placing the control and choice over the clients that
promoted the respect and dignity. The experience by the clients however indicated that the
changes are very small and thus the clients continued to use the previous services. Some of the
staffs mentioned that the client expectations and the industry controls influenced the range of the
services and thus the clients are unable to differentiate between the different types of the service
models. Role change is the next big issue and CDC created difficulties for some of the staffs.
The role of the coordinator in reviewing and assessing the clients along with managing the staff
is changing. The experienced staff coordinators needed to change according to the requirement
of the job and also develop requisite knowledge and skills for the intervention and the
assessment role (Ottmann, Allen & Feldman, 2013). This has resulted into negative impacts on
the clients. However, some of the clients still perceive that the advantages in the long run. Within

3SOCIO-POLITICAL AND HEALTH ISSUES IN AGED CARE
the community aged services sector in Australia, it has been seen that the sub-contracting is very
common and this has created challenges for both the client and the fund holding organization.
The staffs mentioned the issue that the third party organizations do not take any direction from
the clients. The geographical coverage of the service also created an issue for the clients and this
prevented the clients from accessing the preferred service supplier. It has been identified that the
restrictions applied on the number of the places that the organization will operate created a sort
of hindrance. Some of the clients and the carers identified issues that are related to the unmet
service needs. It has been observed that due to the discontinuity in the services between the
community sector and the hospital has resulted into discrepancies (Bradley, 2017). The industry
culture data highlights the fact that the CDC requires a considerable amount of change and it is
challenging from the perspectives of the carers, staffs and clients. The cultural impact is seen in
what the clients are being offered and also in differentiating the CDC services. It has been found
that the conflicts arise due to the case manager perceptions and obligations of the client safety,
family or carer pressure, heavy caseloads. Thus, it has been seen that the with regard to the older
people, the existing beliefs and the values have been identified to be affecting the decision
making and the clinical judgement (Gill et al., 2017). The above facts suggest that consumer-
directed care came across several issues and the majority of them arose not only at the level of
the staff, carer, client but also at the level of government and the third party health organization.
The political, philosophical, legal and ethical issues associated with the implementation
of the consumer-directed care are discussed in this section. It is important to note that the
consumer dedicated care is one of the humanitarian mission that are directed towards serving the
aged people. The present scenario reveals that the competition between the third party service
providers took to the competition of providing the healthcare, and also attract the maximum