Newsletter: 5 February 2025

Aged care assessment wait times have more than doubled for some older Australians in the last eight years with recently released government data revealing mixed fortunes for people wanting to access home care services compared to entering residential care.

The next phase of the quality indicator program is right around the corner with April 1, the key date for the three new staffing quality indicators, looming. 

Value for money is about to become more important than ever in aged care as the sector will need to provide its worth by adopting a user-pays system where residents have more of the power. 

With dementia’s prevalence expected to almost double over the next 30 years, there’s a concerted effort within the aged care sector to increase training and education opportunities for aged care workers.

Many Australian summers are filled with the type of confronting weather extremes eloquently captured in Dorothea Mackellar’s famous poem, My Country. In it, she calls this sunburnt country one of ‘drought and flooding rains’.