Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I concur with much of what Senator Scullion said on this MPI. I do not think that there is a crisis in aged care in this country—far from it—and I do think the government has done a good job on accreditation, on a complaints mechanism and so forth. But we cannot be complacent. I think there is a case to answer, given that complaints were made that appear not to have been followed up. So we do need to investigate; we do need to get to the bottom of it. And we do need to consider some form of mandatory reporting of abuse. It is also the case that I think it would not do too much harm to have a shake-up of the complaints monitoring and accreditation system. They could be more transparent and they could be more independent of government. I think we should also explore police checks for those employed in residential care. And we most certainly need to look at whistleblower legislation, not just for aged care but across the board, that makes sure that those who report abuse are not targeted in any way.

I thought I would take the opportunity today of talking more broadly. We have given a lot of attention in this place to the abuse of children, and there are 40,000 or so reports of abuse or neglect of children in this country every year—that is in the community and within our institutions. Not a lot has been said about an equally appalling issue—that of abuse of a similarly vulnerable group within our community, the frail aged. The vast majority of older people in residential care have either severe or, more often, profound disability. Even within the group of people with profound disability, those in residential care are likely to be the oldest and frailest and more often likely to be women. This puts them at very high risk of exploitation and sexual, physical and emotional abuse, not to mention medical and physical neglect. I think it is an indictment of the currently poorly maintained data sources that there is no reliable data on the prevalence of abuse or neglect in nursing homes or residential long-term care facilities or, for that matter, out in the community.

The piecemeal evidence we do have suggests the problem is serious, if not widespread, and it is a very complicated problem. Although the focus tends to be on the abuse of residents by aged care workers, this is not the only issue that we need to deal with. Violence directed at staff by residents and families is a real problem in aged care facilities, as are other incidents which are in many cases problems of institutional care per se. Estimates have suggested that 80 per cent of staff experience frequent verbal and physical aggression from residents. The most common occurrence of aggression results from residents within the high-care areas and within dementia specific units, and often lack of training in those dementia areas is part of the cause. Violence and aggression in the context of dementia is common. Estimates have suggested that around 20 per cent of aged care residents with dementia are physically aggressive to staff and other residents.

Abuse of older Australians is not limited to residential aged care. There is a growing awareness that many elder persons suffer the pain of psychological, physical and sexual abuse, neglect and exploitation at the hands of their own family members. Estimates vary as to the extent of the problem, but it is generally accepted that between three per cent and five per cent of people aged 65 and above experience some form of abuse within a domestic setting. Given the population projections for Australia, using the conservative estimate of three per cent would mean that by 2011 some 97,000 Australians would be subject to elder abuse in domestic settings, and the vast majority of those will not come to the attention of the authorities.

No-one, whatever their age, should be subjected to violent, abusive, humiliating or neglectful behaviour. We have had some success in increasing awareness of child abuse by putting efforts into education and prevention. We have encouraged people to report any signs of this abuse and made it compulsory in some fields. Now we should be exercising the same diligence to protect older and infirm people. We have a growing ageing population, which means that more and more Australians will be at risk of being abused, whether in the community, in residential care or even in a hospital setting.