Advantages and Challenges of Older People Remaining in Their Own Home

NUR104 Assessment Task 2: Workbook 40% (Revised 4/09/2019)
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1. The majority of older Australian’s continue to live in their own homes, with
or without support. Discuss 2 advantages and 2 challenges of older people
remaining in their own home. (200 words)
/5 marks
The two advantages of older people remaining in their own home are as
follows:
1. Firstly, this is an effective option as it reduces additional expense
and expenditure involved in hospital stays, emergency
department visits and inpatient treatment. It reduces isolation in
elderly people due to stay at communicate care or residential care
service
2. Another advantage of staying at home is that it increased
opportunities for elderly people to stay independent, maintain
their dignity and remain in close proximity with their closed ones.
Majority of elders prefer ageing at home because of social bonding
and emotional connect with their home. Graybill, McMeekin and
Wildman (2014) give the evidence that many adults prefer to grow
old in their own home as they age.
In contrast, two challenges of older people remaining at home are as follows:
1. Firstly, ageing relate decline in capacity can compromise older
adults ability to maintain their home and this can seriously
threaten successful aging at home. Inability to complete daily
activities may lead to frustration in elderly. Hence, maintaining
safe and healthy environment can be a challenged which will
disrupt successful ageing goals (Fausset et al. 2011)
2. Secondly, home of elderly people may not be designed to address
their needs and they may experience health risk in such house
due to advancement of cognitive and functional limitations (Akbar
et al. 2018).
References

Akbar, D., Rahman, A., Nguyen, J. and Rolfe, J., 2018. Cost benefit
analysis for adoption of technologies that improve quality of life for
elderly people living in their own home within the RDAFCW region.
https://rdafcw.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Project-Report_RDAFCW-
Final-Report.pdf
Fausset, C.B., Kelly, A.J., Rogers, W.A. and Fisk, A.D., 2011. Challenges
to aging in place: Understanding home maintenance difficulties.
Journal
of Housing for the Elderly,
25(2), pp.125-141.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02763893.2011.571105
Graybill, E.M., McMeekin, P. and Wildman, J., 2014. Can aging in place be cost
effective? A systematic review.
PLoS One,
9(7), p.e102705.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/
journal.pone.0102705
2. The My Aged Care website https://www.myagedcare.gov.au/ is a
central repository for information about aged care services in Australia.
Discuss how an older person can get assessed through My Aged Care to
get the services they need. (200 words)
/5 marks
Response
To get the service that older person needs, they must visit the My Aged Care
website and browse through the types of service available for elderly people.
In addition, to get assessed to know the right type of service they need, older
people can apply for an assessment. The advantage of this assessment is that
elderly people can know if they are eligible for subsidized age care and other
types of services they need. This starts with phone call to My aged Care and
the contact centre staffs talk with client to identify their needs and the
possibility of a face-to-face assessment. This is followed by face-to-face
assessment at client’s home where the assessor talks to elderly client about
their needs and they work to develop a support plan. After completing the
assessment process, the assessor finally decides whether the client is eligible
for government funded services or not. The type of assessment process also
differs and based on type of assessment for individual client, the assessment
decision comes at different times. The two types of assessment that takes

place are as follows:
1. Home support assessment with a Regional Assessment Service: In
this assessment, the client can know about their eligibility at the
assessment only.
2. Comprehensive assessment with Aged Care Assessment team
(ACAT): In this case, the eligibility and types of service for client is
given later after review of all the information (Australian
Government 2019).
References
Australian Government 2019.
Apply for an assessment. Retrieved from:
https://www.myagedcare.gov.au/assessment/what-happens-after-
assessment
3. Identify one organisation applicable to the older person and discuss how it
informs the support and protection of older people in Australia. (200 words)
/5 marks
Response
One organization that provides support and advocacy to older Australians
includes the Australian Association of Gerentology (AAG) which is the largest
multidisciplinary professional association of people who have interferes in
ageing and who work to provide support to older Australian population. People
from diverse fields such as policy analysts, support workers, administrators,
voluntary agencies, students and older people are members of the
organizations. All the members engaged in implementing policy related and
advocacy initiatives through committees and special interest groups. The main
strategic direction is to increase its voices and provide independent,
multidisciplinary approach to aged care. They working towards connecting
research, policy and practice to promote aged care services and improve care
experiences of elderly clients. They key principles that they are using to fulfill
their purpose are as follows:
 They use evidence informed principles such as practice
knowledge, research and experiences to inform appropriate
actions
 By taking multi-disciplinary and holistic approach to care, they put