Dignity and financial sense is failing – peak body for aged care providers weighs in on consequences and strategy for delayed Support at Home packages 

On the back of promises to steer the ship of aged care into sustainable and dignified waters, new figures from the Productivity Commission report have advocates and industry leaders profoundly sobered and frustrated at current policy. Wait times for elderly Australians to receive aged care packages has more than doubled, advocates say this is galling to say the least and damaging to get closer to saying more. Across the gamut of provider heads, peak bodies and long-time advocates, there are growing calls to see the fumble in its totality. The consequences of current policy in the real-world has meant a growing chasm between the intention of the new act, in it’s rights-based and dignity centred theory, and ballooning wait-times for care at home, where seniors’ health worsen, and a growing lack of strategic oversight across sectors. Experts from within and outside of aged care have increased their calls to near stratospheric levels to direct policy to meet and respond to costly overarching trends in hospital overcrowding and residential aged care capacity fears. What is unfolding now in the wait-times for Support at Home has far wider ramifications, advocates attest, than is being currently recognised.

Ballooning wait-times

The Productivity Commission’s latest report spells it out in stark detail, from assessment approval to service commencement, Australian seniors are now on average waiting 245 days, up from 118 days. However, the first hurdle, that of getting the assessment at all is also lengthening out, with the report showing that the median time to get assessment has risen from 22 to 27 days.

Tom Symondson, CEO of Ageing Australia, the peak body of providers in the country, spoke with the ABC about the ramifications of these wait-times and what provider leadership have been seeing directly from clients.

Articulating the frustration that many advocates, provider leadership and front-line staff have been, Symondson shares, “it’s a predictable outcome, the longer an older person has to wait for care the higher their needs become.”

In looking at the report, industry experts have noted that the statistics indicate one positive trend, if a senior is assessed or re-assessed as high needs, the average wait-times for packages comes down to 40 days. However, as many veterans in the industry have championed, aged and healthcare cannot be looked at in siloes. The need for understanding multi-faceted trends and consequences is critical to shaping policy that can effectively safeguard the industry and the vulnerable at its heart.

Consequences

Symondson conveys what multiple provider leadership have sought to make plain, allowing wait-times for seniors when it comes to Support at Home wait-times is costly to human-beings, multiple sectors, as well for the aggregate economy and all tax-payers within the country.

“The problem is, if you’re waiting a year for relatively low level needs, by that time you will have high needs and you’ll need to go into that category and that’s happening more and more often.”

He continues, “not to mention, by the time some people get their home-care package, they should be in residential care, where if they’d had the home care package a year earlier they could have stayed at home for years longer.

Russell Bricknell, CEO of Juniper aged care in WA has been clear on this for over a year, funding support at home should be seen for what it is, a strategic return on investment. In keeping seniors at home and healthier for longer, seniors are kept out of already strained hospitals and near-capacity residential aged care.

The recent numbers from Mirus are also clear, RAC bed occupancy has been well over the 90% for years, with no signs of slipping. With the oncoming boomer cohort aging into current availability, RAC beds are known to be starkly below projected need levels. 

As health ministers have been prolifically vocal in messaging, healthcare and hospital capacity is at record strained levels. The clash of moral and pragmatic truths, advocates and experts say, has never been more pronounced, seniors must be kept out of hospitals and early admission into residential aged care. Support at Home must work, as it has been championed at the singular immediate solution to managing aged care services, advocates and provider leadership say long-gone is the time for the government to acknowledge a need to pivot.

Symondson affirms Bricknell’s sentiments and those of many heads who he is in contact with across the sector, seniors should not be stuck in hospital, “we see so much talk of older people in hospital, when it is the worst possible place for an older person to be.”

Effective planning for an ageing population

The demand for public funding in aged and healthcare to be spent strategically, with impact, and that substantial reform is required, has only grown as the cracks widen.

Symondson notes, “last year the Australian government spent $36 billion on aged care, a couple of years ago that was in the mid twenties…there has been much needed investment but you see that we still have these problems.”

He speaks to what many advocates and leaders have been saying, “no one should be surprised at the number of older people in the population.”

Many advocates and provider leadership have publicly commented in the past few years on how the data has been clear for all of those years, that the government’s inability to be positioned to meet this current need is bewildering. The demography data has been evident for decades in detailing who in the country is what age, policy in action and effectiveness must meet this reality, even if the time to pivot is immediately.

As to the rising need, Symondson shares the figures, “a few years ago, there were a few thousand, a few tens of thousands of people on the home care waiting list, now with 110,000 or so waiting for assessment and another hundred or so thousand have been assessed and waiting for a package…it’s blasted our ability to respond out from water. We need to see more packages.”

“We need to see assessment times fall or this is going to get worse and worse and worse.”

Provider frustration

Providers have continued to raise their frustration publicly along with continued conversations with the peak body, Ageing Australia.

For the many sincere provider leadership, along with front-line staff who seek to pour themselves into the work of aged care, hearing the struggle of seniors trying to firstly get assessed, and then wait at home in possibly worsening physical and mental health is awful and frustratingly, seemingly helpless.

Symondson reiterates the sentiment of many providers who have the capacity and earnestness to provide services, and the frustration at the slowness of the systemic process of assessment and package approvals.

“The numbers we’re talking about at the moment are before you even get to call a provider. You’re waiting back that year plus, and remember, that’s not including the time you waited for assessment.”

“So if you waited a month for assessment and then over a year, once you’ve been assessed, that’s nothing to do with the provider, that’s the government.”

For the thousands of seniors who clearly meet eligibility requirements for aid, there is simply no other choice but to wait. Symondson recalls situations playing out across the country, “until the government says, ‘right here’s your money’, you can’t call a provider unless you’re going to pay for it all yourself. And those costs would be prohibitive.”

Unnecessary delay

Many provider leadership, such as Bricknell in WA, have been open as to capacity. There was capacity to be ready to meet and service home care package approvals on July 1 2025 and yet tens of thousands of home care package approvals were still delayed, along with the act.

In recent comments, it is evident that this capacity was conveyed to government. Symondson attests, “what we’ve consistently said to government is if you release more packages, we will be able to service them.”

“And we said to them when they delayed last year from 1 July to 1 November, the new act which was very important to delay, because the government and sector weren’t ready but don’t delay the packages as well.”

He shares that the government articulated, “they said at the time, well, it’s because you’re not ready because you don’t have enough workers.”

And yet critically, this is not the sentiment of the collective voice of providers in the country, “all of our members, every member I asked and we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of homecare members said if we had an increasing packages today, we could service them.”

Capacity to meet increased packages

Far from the deluge of approvals the government has resisted, Symondson conveys the reform hope of many providers and advocates is that approvals will pick up speed at expected and sustainable rates.

“Now, it’s not necessarily sustainable into the future. If we had 100,000 packages land tomorrow, we might struggle but that’s not what we’re talking about.”

He clarifies the position of many high-performing providers across the country, “we’re talking about gradually increasing to combat these long waiting times and these long waiting lists. We do have enough workers to do that.”

He is not dismissive of the need for increased staffing into the sector, “we do need to recruit more” which will continue to be a challenge for provider leadership to meet. But sector messaging is frank, the positioning and resources are in place to meet far increased approval rates of packages than were originally released.

Unanimous lift

From the “disappointing” 20,000 packages that were approved last year, Symondson conveys the encouraged response to the announcement of the higher approval numbers for this year.

“The 83,000 that the government is releasing this financial year is actually a big win.”

However, as provider leadership and advocates have indicated, the lift to come is a significant challenge for all involved. It will take everyone leaning in, from government, non-profit, for-profit, faith-based, alongside multi-disciplinary experts to meet the gargantuan uptick to come.

Symondson, on behalf of provider heads, conveys that no one in the sector is naïve now that the waitlist times have been more transparently made known. What is to come is significant, and the need for the government to pivot strategically and effectively heightened.

Transparency of wait lists has become central for all in the sector to have clarity on the need and the stretch of resources that will be required, “what we didn’t expect was for it to have so little impact, for so many more people to be coming onto that list.” 

“In the past, we’ve seen governments release 50,000 packages in a year and it gets rid of the waiting list.” With this no longer the case, reform is desperately required for strategy to meet speed.

Not a capped system

Symondson echoes the sentiment of many providers and experts in the field, reminding policymakers of the findings of the royal commission.

“The royal commission said that this should not be a capped system or a rationed system.”

Continuing he says, “The royal commission said as soon as someone needs homecare, they should wait no longer than a month. That was the royal commission’s recommendation and they should get back here immediately.”

And the writing is now on the wall, the funding to meet need will need to be found from somewhere. Some advocates wonder if this may be the time where corporate tax laws, allowing notorious sectors to minimise corporate tax earnings, may become an election issue in the future.

Symondson frankly asserts the numbers the aged care industry sees as needed to support and facilitate care for Australia’s seniors, “we would say the biggest thing government has to do is every budget from now to forever, instead of, 10 or 15,000 additional packages, they’re going to need to release the kind of number we saw this year, 83,000 or more thousand packages.”

Balancing act

Symondson does tackle a difficulty the sector has faced, that of struggling to find sustainability in profit, “the sector was going down the toilet, and had such a lack of financial viability, that something had to give.” He is speaking in terms of the balancing act of contributions that have now been a part of the home care scheme.

“The bargain that was made was that people would be asked to pay for some of those services that they receive at home.”

From his conversation with providers, he conveys, “we are seeing some impacts of people saying, I will have to choose between food and gardening. Things like gardening are the things that attract the higher contributions, but we have not seen a drastic fall off in people saying, ‘I just won’t receive services.’”

He notes, “that was the big fear and that has not born out.”

Yet the greater balancing act is that funding must meet the timeliness of need, seniors must be able to receive assessment and packages at the appropriate level, and most importantly, at an appropriate waiting time, before health and choices deteriorate.

“The problem is you’re waiting so long for your package, you might need residential care or hospital before you receive it”, he says.

 “So we need to get people their packages as soon as possible. Then we can actually assess what contributions impact is. [Currently] You’re not getting the package until it’s too late.”

For countless providers, their peak body and the advocates championing for the seniors at the heart of aged care, the aggregate focus, to get assessments and approvals to those on the waiting list more quickly, means not only dignity for seniors but national financial feasibility in the long run. 

Support at Home means keeping seniors at home for longer, healthier for longer, and out of overcrowded hospitals and at-capacity RAC. Policy reform to meet this is critical not only for an ageing demographic but the entire gamut of the population.