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Aged care’s new front line: our own homes
From untrained and unfamiliar staff to high costs, poor transparency and confusion, the dream of ageing at home is, for some, turning into a nightmare under a privatised, partly for-profit system.
- By Farrah Tomazin and Michael Bachelard
- The Age
For Peter Roxburgh, the last straw in dealing with Australia’s privatised home-care system for the elderly was a simple, $100 toilet frame.
His mother, Joyce, is 89, has severe dementia, and lives at home, where he cares for her.
The Commonwealth government, through its Home Care Packages scheme, gives her almost $33,000 a year to spend with an…