Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to highlight this government's appalling record of delivering on its promises. The delays in transitioning to the new model of seniors home-care packages have been a disgrace, and this government should be ashamed to be kicking the can down the road for six months, causing considerable uncertainty and distress to some of the oldest, most isolated and most vulnerable constituents in my electorate. Sadly, I'm not exaggerating when I say people will die waiting for the assessment, approval and delivery of their life-changing, life-sustaining packages.

But this is a constituency statement, not a grievance debate, so I actually rise today to commend the hardworking team behind the staying-in-place model of care for seniors. Conceived in 2018, in the small O'Connor town of Pingelly, 150 kilometres south-east from Perth, the Staying in Place program has been driven by former WA Liberal cabinet minister the Hon. Helen Morton and Pingelly local Lee Steel of the Pingelly Community Resource Centre. Their dream was to support Pingelly seniors with services delivered by a locally sourced care workforce. As the Somerset Alliance, they secured federal funding under the previous coalition government for a pilot program to find ways of reducing loneliness and improving connectedness between geographically isolated older people in regional and remote communities.

The concept of a virtual village was hatched, wherein activities could be hosted remotely by a concierge in much the same way as a real aged-care village. To date, this virtual village has brought together over 270 participants separated by the tyranny of distance and lack of transport or inability to travel and has connected them through modern-day technology. Upon this they built an entire suite of home-care services delivered by a latent local workforce comprised of retirees, stay-at-home parents and other skilled persons not engaged in the workforce. The result, Staying in Place, is a community led initiative whereby locals with various skill sets deliver a full suite of care options, enabling older people to age and thrive in the communities they have lived in and contributed to all of their lives.

This sounds like a simple concept, but it's taken a lot of hard work by Helen, Lee and their team to get the machine working, and now they are on the move. The concept has spread like wildfire to 55 other regional and remote communities, not only in my electorate of O'Connor but throughout Australia.

I conclude by saying how proud I am to have been involved in this initiative, and I welcome Lee and Helen to Canberra, where they will be giving evidence to the inquiry of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee into aged-care service delivery. But I'm also not alone in my praise. The Department of Social Services, who funded Staying in Place as a pilot, praised its cost effectiveness and positive health outcomes. Helen herself agrees that people who leave their communities often don't thrive; Staying in Place gives them a chance to age with dignity in the place they know best.

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