Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to advise colleagues that last month, with Minister Morrison, I announced $34 million of grants under the healthy ageing program. The grants have been awarded for 54 projects that will allow aged-care providers to develop, trial and innovate different ways of supporting older people, and particularly different ways of helping older people stay at home for longer, which—Mr President, as you know—is the objective of most people.

This program has a particular focus on regional and rural communities, Senator Canavan will be pleased to know, as well as other projects. They are actually quite exciting. When I was announcing this funding, I was in Sydney at an organisation called HammondCare, who do great work. A project that they submitted an application for, which was successful, is a pilot called Dogs 4 Dementia, where assistance dogs are provided to people living at home with dementia where they have a family carer present. The dementia dogs are able to undertake daily living tasks, which has a few good benefits: it provides greater independence for the person with dementia, and it also provides greater independence, importantly, for the person who is caring for them. It has also been demonstrated that dementia dogs have a significant impact on reducing stress levels and supporting the emotional wellbeing of both the person with dementia and also the person who is the unpaid family carer. So that is just one example of some of the innovative things which are being trialled and piloted through these healthy ageing grants.