Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill introduces a Serious Incident Response Scheme that will respond to, and take steps to prevent, the incidence of abuse and neglect of older Australians in residential aged care. This includes those receiving flexible care delivered in a residential aged-care setting.

Consistent with the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission's report on elder abuse, this bill will introduce a scheme that replaces existing arrangements in relation to reportable assaults.

The scheme will provide greater protections for older Australians by taking into account broader instances of abuse and neglect, by introducing more robust requirements for residential aged-care providers to respond and report, and by providing the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission with more functions and powers.

The bill introduces legislative requirements that will build provider capacity to identify risk and respond to incidents if and when they occur. By imposing these requirements, the scheme is expected to drive learning and improvements that will reduce the number of preventable serious incidents in future.

From 1 April 2021, residential aged-care providers will gain additional responsibilities to identify, record, manage and resolve all incidents that occur.

The focus will be on a provider's response to an incident—the supports they put in place for the impacted aged-care consumer or consumers; the actions they take to continuously improve and reduce the likelihood of incidents reoccurring; and the way in which they use information about incidents to inform risk management, feedback and education to staff and to improve the service's capability to prevent, manage and resolve incidents. Through the scheme, providers will also be required to report serious incidents to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.

The bill defines reportable incidents to include a number of categories of abuse and neglect. This includes: unreasonable use of force, unlawful sexual contact or inappropriate sexual conduct, psychological or emotional abuse, stealing or financial coercion by a staff member, inappropriate use of physical or chemical restraint, unexplained absences from care, neglect and unexpected death. Importantly, unlike the previous aged-care reporting scheme, there is no exemption on the reporting of resident-on-resident incidents, where the resident has an assessed cognitive impairment.

Whether it be alleged, suspected or a known occurrence, residential aged-care providers will be required to report serious incidents to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. Reporting to the commission will be implemented in two phases.

From April 2021, a two-stage reporting process will be required for all critical reportable incidents—which are those that result in physical or psychological injury or illness requiring onsite medical or psychological treatment or more significant treatment.

Within 24 hours of becoming aware of the reportable incident, the residential aged-care provider must notify the commission. If the incident is also criminal in nature, the provider must also make a report to police. Following the initial report, the second stage of the reporting process involves an incident status report that must be provided to the commission within five business days, or by a date specified by the commission. The status report will include any outstanding or relevant information that was not provided in the first notification, for example remedial action taken or supports put in place to minimise harm to the victim.

The residential aged-care provider may also be required to submit a final report within two months of the incident. The commission will determine, on a case-by-case basis, if a final report is required and if so, the parameters of the report. It will likely include matters relating to investigation of the incident, and corrective actions being taken.

From later in 2021 providers will be required to report all other serious incidents within 30 days. Until these reporting requirements commence, providers must still keep records of these incidents.

Existing record-keeping requirements will be expanded to cover the broader incident management obligations. These require records of each incident to be kept by the provider, as well as the need to make records available to the commission. This enables the commission to fulfil its assessment, monitoring, compliance and complaints-handling functions.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will be responsible for administering the scheme, using its existing monitoring and regulatory powers. Once the commission receives reports about serious incidents, it will apply risk-based monitoring of how aged-care providers investigate and respond to serious incidents. In instances where the responses are inadequate, the commission may require further action, such as an independent investigation.

The bill will also provide the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner with additional functions and powers dedicated to dealing with the scheme. These are intended to ensure the commission is able to respond proportionately to all levels of risk, to safeguard consumers. This will include powers to respond to serious incidents and provide compliance notices and directions to take action, and will also include imposing civil penalties, infringement notices, enforceable undertakings and injunctions to ensure compliance with the new obligations under the scheme.

To ensure consistency in regulation, the bill will enable these powers to be used more broadly, to enforce the aged-care responsibilities of approved providers and related offences. These are standard regulatory powers available under the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014, to provide the commission with a more graduated suite of powers for responding to and preventing noncompliance. These powers will also enable the commission to take more effective action to protect consumers.

The bill also provides additional powers to enable the commission to obtain information or documents directly from its source. This will ensure the commission is equipped to obtain the information the commission requires to effectively carry out its reportable incident functions under the scheme, while enhancing the commission's broader regulatory framework.

The bill will also strengthen protections for people who report abuse or neglect in a residential aged-care facility to cover both existing and former staff members as well as current and past residential care recipients, their families and others supporting them. These changes are necessary to ensure those who witness or suspect that a serious incident has occurred do not face repercussions, such as civil or criminal liability, for making such reports.

Following passage of the bill, subordinate legislation will specify additional details, including incident management system requirements and the reporting time frames mentioned.

The scheme complements and supports existing regulatory settings including the integrated expectations of the Aged Care Quality Standards, the Charter of Aged Care Rights and open disclosure requirements. Together these will support residential aged-care providers to engage in risk management and continuous improvement to deliver safe and quality care to older Australians.

The health, safety and wellbeing of older Australians is of utmost importance to the Australian government. Any abuse of a person in residential aged care is unacceptable and it is important that these incidents are reported, managed and prevented from occurring in future.

Debate adjourned.