Phantom aged care packages

TENS of thousands of older people who need help to stay at home will miss out because a budget funding increase is $1.4bn short of what is required.

The revelation came as aged care providers, nurses and pensioners welcomed the record $17.7bn funding injection for aged care but agreed it was not enough to fix the neglect of our elderly.

A detailed analysis by the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants’ Association reveals the 100,000-long waiting list for home care packages won’t be eliminated by extra funding in the budget.

The government’s own data shows in December there were 96,859 people waiting for a home care package but the budget will fund only 40,000 new places next financial year and a further 40,000 from July 2022.

Each of the four levels of home care package has a set amount of funding.

The lowest level 1 package is an annual subsidy of $8900 a year, level 2 is $15,700 a year, level 3 is $34,200 a year and level 4 provides $51,900 a year.

The association dissected government data showing how many people were waiting for a package or a package upgrade at each level to determine the amount of funding required was $7.9 billion.

To fund the additional 80,000 packages in the budget the government has allocated only $6.5 billion over four years.

“That’s a shortfall of $1.4 billion,” Association spokesman Paul Versteege said.

The government’s two previous announcements about increased home care places — places 10,000 in 2018-2019 and 12,000 in 2019-2020 — were also deceptive because there also wasn’t enough money to deliver the care, Mr Versteege said.

It appeared these places were never actually delivered because the government’s own figures showed there were 22,102 home care packages allocated but not “active”, Mr Versteege said.

“To all intents and purposes they are there but no one can access them. It’s a mystery.”

“With the budget announcement of 80,000 packages, the number of inactive ‘allocated’ packages has now risen to 102,102 packages,” he said.

Australian Aged Care Collaboration spokesman Sean Rooney told News Corp the extra budget funding would not be enough to cover any wage rises.