Meeting the social and emotional support needs of older people using aged care services

Abstract

Aged care services touch the lives of substantial - and increasing - numbers of people. Yet the capacity of service systems to meet older people's needs, and to do so at standards acceptable to the Australian community, remains under question, subject to several major inquiries in recent years including the current Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Recognising that the community expects aged care services to deliver supports which go beyond basic physical care, this report explores: - the ways current aged care arrangements and processes of care work attend to older people's social and emotional needs; and - the policy, regulatory and organisational arrangements which would more effectively ensure provision of quality, whole-of-person care. In exploring these issues, we recognise the high value that older people place on their relationships with care workers and on the time that workers have available to provide care, as documented in the large body of scholarly literature on service quality. Older people's aspirations for quality caregiving relationships, and for decent social and emotional care, are shared in the wider community, and feature in Australia's quality standards, which emphasise personcentredness as an effective means of supporting wellbeing among older people. However, the psychosocial dimensions of care are often overlooked in the aged care system, including by the funding models and the way aged care organisations and workplaces operate in practice. Thin industrial regulation, individualised funding and consumer-directed care, and an increasing share of profit-motivated provision are converging to promote fragmented, task-oriented models of care, rather than the holistic person-centred models consistent with quality. This report is concerned with what needs to change so that older people receive the care that they need and that the community expects.