HSC400837: Analysis of Consumer Directed Care in Australian Aged Care

This essay critically analyzes the Consumer Directed Care (CDC) model within the Australian aged care system, particularly in the context of a growing aging population. It explores the evolution of home care packages, highlighting the shift towards consumer-directed services since 2015. The analysis covers both the positive aspects of CDC, such as increased consumer choice and independence, and its limitations, including challenges for isolated or financially disadvantaged groups. Furthermore, the essay delves into the political implications of funding aged care services and the ethical and legal issues surrounding the implementation of the Aged Care Act of 1997. It addresses the need for a skilled workforce, quality service delivery, and the balance between consumer rights and provider responsibilities, while also considering the projected increase in the aged population and its impact on the healthcare sector. This document is available on Desklib, where students can find a variety of past papers and solved assignments.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................................2
Consumer Directed Care:............................................................................................................................2
Positive views of Consumer Directed Care:................................................................................................3
Limitations of Consumer Directed Care:....................................................................................................4
Political issues:............................................................................................................................................4
Ethical and legal issues:..............................................................................................................................5
Issues related to Consumer Directed Care model:.....................................................................................6
Conclusion:..................................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................................7
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Introduction:
Consumer Directed Care is a service delivery model designed to provide more flexibility and
choices to consumers. It is used in the aged care sector to describe methods of providing services
which permits those getting services to make their own choices about the forms of facilities they
desire and who should deliver them.
Australian people are living healthier and longer lives. Over 3.7 million i.e. 15% Australian
people are aged 65 and over in 2016. The proportion and number are grow continuously. Hence
their need of care services is also increasing. So, it is vital that these group of people are
provided with the care of their choice. The meet the growing care needs of older people in
Australia the home care packages changes evolves their program accordingly. Therefore, it
became mandatory to provide care services on the basis of Consumer directed care for all Home
Care Packages in July 1st 2015. It was first used as a model of are within Home Care Packages
Programme funded by Commonwealth in 2010-2011. After its success, all new Home care
packages were required to provide services on a CDC basis from 1st August 2013. CDC provides
its consumers with greater choices of variety of services and care they access, when and how
these facilities are provided and by whom. It also provides aged people more control over their
investment for the care and how they spent on it. CDC model is designed to provide higher
quality and appropriate care; better services and value of older people etc. it empowers aged
people to live a healthier ad better older age.
This paper will critically analyses the consumer directed care services and its issues at political
and ethical level in relation to aged people in Australia. This will also brief about the positive
and negative impact of CDC model on the consumer and the service provider. It will explain the
reasons, how the older people are affected by the policy.
Consumer Directed Care:
The consumer directed care is a term related to aged group population which explains the
services provided to the aging group and their preference to choose the type and medium of
services which they are receiving. The consumer can ask the organization providing services to
hire the care worker of their choice (McCallum & Rees, 2017). The consumer can even demand
to hire a local care worker for better care to control or avoid the overhead charges imposed by
theses service providers making funded package go further.
It is based on the concept of control and choice. The main aim of this model is for care providers
to provide support and needs of elderly. It permits care providers to be clear and honest to their
consumers about the cost for the services (Implementing Consumer Directed Care, 2014).
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As people don’t want to lose their independence and want to make their own decisions, this
model also aims to provide sense of independence to elderly as according to this model they can
make their own decisions and choices about the support and care they want (Brodaty, 2012). The
care providers have to work within the principle of CDC to support and care to their consumers.
The principles of CDC include: more flexibility and choices; support to accessibility of
important information and to make informed decisions about care which is best for them; best
quality participation and partnership approach; transparency and rabblements and wellness
(Applicability of Consumer Directed Care principles in residential aged care homes , 2014).
The meaning of consumer directed care model can be further explained as:
 The care and services that one can access, who and how they are being delivered.
 These have discussions about the goals and needs of the consumer.
 These provide option to the consumer to work with their service provider in developing
their individual care plan.
 This also provides option in deciding how much involvement one has in managing their
care packages.
The consumer has knowledge on how their package is being funded and hoe their budget is spent
through monthly income and expense statement (Ottmann & Laragy, 2010).
 The service provider always ensures through online monitoring and formal reviews that
whether the package continues to meet the needs of the consumer or not.
Apart from the services provided there is an agreement between the consumer and service
providers on:
 The level of involvement the consumer wants in managing their home care packages.
 The available budget of home care package for the care and services.
 The cost of the services and care under the current care plan of the consumer.
 The fees and charges of the home care package plan made by the provider to cover their
case management and administration cost.
If the needs of consumer are not met by the home care package plan then the consumer can opt
for higher of packages or use their money to purchase top up services. The consumer directed
plan was introduced by the Australian government as the government wanted to help the old
aged people in their own home for as long as possible.
Positive views of Consumer Directed Care:
 This model has closed the gaps between different levels of care packages there by
benefitting the border line client and letting the client transfer among the different levels
of funding.
 This model has made the consumer more responsible for their care and has more valid
expectations.
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 It’s more equitable for the client, as client with similar care needs would have the similar
amount of individual budget.
 The consumer real needs are addresses instead of assessed needs.
 The model is beneficial to consumer as it has added dementia component in watch care
level in comparison to high care packages (Consumer Directed Care , 2016).
Limitations of Consumer Directed Care:
 As there is no option of pool funding therefore it fails to meet the needs of some client’s
and further loses the flexibility and creativity to meet special needs of client.
 The individual co-payment method acts as a barrier for some consumer in assessing the
services and thus affecting their overall health.
 The clients also have difficulty in accessing the services themselves due to decrease in
hands on case-management support which further degrades the quality of the services.
 It has been observed that many clients face financial burden in case of not using their
money (Beaton, 2017).
Therefore, the consumer directed care can benefit the urban areas people or the mainstream aged
people but not the isolated groups or the groups who are financially disadvantaged like homeless,
people belonging to indigenous ad CALD communities (New analysis identifies potential pitfalls
of a consumer-driven market, 2017).
Political issues:
Due to growing aging population in Australia, it has led to increase in the need of community
aged care services. Most of the aged are centers or programs are funded by the Australian
Government. The fund allocated to these centers comprises of money from taxes. The
government of Australia uses this money to fund for the health care centers and is responsible or
caring for the old aged group (Pietsch, 2016).
There is a need of plans for the elderly people as researches have predicted that in coming years
their numbers will increase. Therefore, government needs to increase its funding to meet the
growing needs of aged population (Politics is broken, 2015). To meet this, the government needs
to collect more funds through taxes and should decide what will be the amount of the taxes and
what should individual pay out of their pockets. This will eventually increase the amount paid
through taxes or assigning more money to the elderly care to ensure that the country is able to
cope up with the growing elderly population in future. The Australian government in an initiative
has started using the assets of the Australian residents for providing proper care to the aged
group. the government uses the homes for the aged care and the government can dedicate from
funds towards the care and the needs for comfort in their homes.
The consumer directed care model also briefs on the Australian government spending on aged
care workers as they need enough to cater the growing population in their home care packages.
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They demand more consumer directed care workers so that they can provide care to each other
on home care package without being stressed and strained. The consumer directed care plan
provides quality care which demands each health care workers to focus on their patient in
providing high level of satisfying services (Fine, 2016). The government of Australia ensures
through regular supervision that the health care provider is delivering quality service and arises
no such incidents due to the negligence of health care providers. The family member of the
patient can also file law suits in case any worker has committed error or accident due to act of
negligence (Moran, David, & Laragy, 2016). It is predicted that by 2020, the population of aged
group will get doubled and the government should have at least one million aged care providers
to cope up with the aged care sector.
Ethical and legal issues:
As per the Aged Care Act of 1997, the care workers need to provide care to the elderly people by
following the legal rules and regulation of the act. For example: Accountability Principle 2014,
User Right Principles 2014 are some of the act which the providers should follow while
delivering service to the patient. The others laws include the consumer law and anti-
discrimination legislation which govern the services of home care packages (Howe, n.d.). It is
significant for the health care providers to stick to these laws and principle, to avoid themselves
from engaging in unlawful acts.
The majority of the laws are related to home care packages in comparison to the other packages
like extended age care and community aged care packages at home. The reason behind this was
that the Australian government wanted to focus on flexibility and option by using consumer
directed care model.
A practitioner or health care provider who understands the ethics remain aware that the services
have to be provided to the elderly people as per the needs of the consumer based on the
consumer directed care model. While providing care to aged group. The providers should
understand the legal obligation and what another fellow team member wants them to follow
ethically. An elderly care worker should not only focus on the safety of the patients but should
also consider the safety and rights of the other people as well (Kaambwa, McCaffrey, & Chen,
2015). The right of people is securing under User Rights 2014, according to which the provider
need to ensure that the right of the consumer and the peoples around them is maintained. It I
ethically correct to respect the right of the other people as well so that one can act professionally
while performing their duty. It is very important to keep a balance between the duty and
responsibility while performing their job.
According to law, the aged care providers should take of their patients in such a way that they
are causing any harm to any other people. the consumer directed care always provide option to
the consumer for making their own choices on services they want. The consumer considering the
have chosen after weighing the risks while also ensuring the care provided meets all the legal
requirements (Dip, Cameron, Ratcliffe, Kaambwa, & Gresham, 2017). In order to take care of
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both the needs, the provider must establish a good relationship with the client so that the client
provider can meet the legal requirement and perform his duty at the same time.
Issues related to Consumer Directed Care model:
As per the growing number of elderly population, the number of elderly service providers is not
sufficient to meet all the needs of the elderly group. This is one of the major issue of the
consumer directed care model in which there is imbalance between the number of consumer and
service providers (Thompson, 2008). This further leads to mis happenings in the process due to
added workloads over the health care providers. The number of aged care providers are only
366000in Australia which cannot provide quality service to ever increasing elderly population.
The other issue includes that, the consumer directed care model provides services only
to consumers with home care packages and its services are not available to the people living in
remote and rural areas of Australia. The services are also not easily available to the aboriginal
and the culturally and linguistically diverse peoples. The balance between the duty of care and
risk factor while using the consumer directed care model is also an issue.
This arises because the consumer has the option of making their own choices and service
provider have to trust upon the choices made after analyzing the risk factor. Therefore, it
becomes difficult at times when the elderly care worker is aware that choices made have adverse
effects but at the same time person provides care to the patients. This can be defined as conflict
of interest (Scala, 2017). Also, this model only focuses on the needs and demands of the
consumer and ignoring the needs of the providers.
Conclusion:
From the above paper it is evident that the Consumer Directed Care provides care and support to
the elderly in Australia according to their needs and choices. They have full right to make their
own choices in terms of making the decisions about the services they want and from whom they
want it to be delivered. The care providers have to work for their consumers according to the
principles of CDC. There are several benefits of CDC model but has some limitations also. It
addresses real needs of elderly and provides care with greater satisfaction. Many consumers face
financial burden while accessing this care facilities. It is highly assessible to the people living in
urban areas while people living in rural areas and indigenous communities do not have easy
accessibility to these services. The political issues briefed in this paper shows that the
government should plan services according to the growing needs of the aged group. The
government should emphasize on the care of the people rather than focusing on the other
infrastructure.
The health care providers should follow all the rules and regulation while providing care to the
aged people. the provider should be aware that the services provided to the elderly people has to
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be based on the consumer directed care model. The paper also explained about the issues of the
consumer directed care model and its affects on the consumer and aged care providers. The
model provides services only to those having active home care packages and do not extend its
services in the rural or remote areas. The model only cares about the needs of the consumers
while ignoring the needs of aged care providers. Hence, this paper analyses all the aspects of
consumer and ethical level in relation to the aging population in Australia.
References
Applicability of Consumer Directed Care principles in residential aged care homes . (2014,
July ). Retrieved from Department of Social Services :
https://agedcare.health.gov.au/sites/g/files/net1426/f/documents/09_2015/applicability-
of-consumer-directed-care-principles-in-residential-aged-care-homes.pdf
Beaton, T. (2017, October 27). What are the Pros and Cons of Consumer Directed Health
Plans? Retrieved from Healthy Prayer Intelligence:
https://healthpayerintelligence.com/news/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-consumer-
directed-health-plans
Brodaty, H. (2012). Consumer Directed Care (CDC) . Retrieved from UNSW:
https://cheba.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/presentations/CDC
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consumer-directed-system-of-community-care-to-function/
Howe, A. L. (n.d.). Is Consumer Directed Care a direction for Australia? Retrieved from
Alzheimer’s Australia: https://www.dementia.org.au/files/ConsumerDirectedCare.pdf
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Implementing Consumer Directed Care. (2014, March 26). Retrieved from Australian Human
Rights Commission: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/news/speeches/implementing-
consumer-directed-care
Kaambwa, B., McCaffrey, N., & Chen, G. (2015). Investigating consumers' and informal carers'
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