Aged care minister reflects on ‘huge’ responsibility to fix the sector she once worked in
Pushing an afternoon tea cart around a Brisbane aged care home, Anika Wells saw the lives of the elderly in residential care up close.
It was 2004 and the ambitious young law student could not have predicted how relevant the experience – a part-time job to support her studies – would be in her future.
Federal Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells and her mother Deb both used to work in the sector.Credit:Dan Peled
Almost two decades later, the member for Lilley has been sworn in as minister for aged care in the Albanese Labor government and the expectations of the portfolio are immense.
Fixing aged care – a system a royal commission found was failing to meet the needs of the nation’s most vulnerable in a damning report exposing abuse and neglect – was a key election promise.
Wells, now 36, worked as an aged care kitchen assistant for almost two years, doing the 3.30pm to 8pm shift, while her mum Deb, 67, who is now retired, worked in reception at the same facility for six years from 2001.
“The nurse and I did the afternoon tea run,” the minister recalled.
“I had to put the cart together with tea, coffee and the afternoon tea and then I would wheel it around to each of the five wings.
“That way, you got to see everybody and you got to know everyone’s regular food … Then back to the kitchen and then put dinner on, clean up and then go home.”
Wells said the experience had been “a very good and necessary exposure to different people that I hadn’t come across before” in her suburban, middle-class upbringing.
For Deb, even 20 years ago, the biggest challenge for an aged care administrator was finding staff.
“In the office, the first and most pressing problem at all times, always, was trying to fill the roster,” she said.
“We spent probably 80 per cent of our day trying to do that.”
Wells said her discussions with constituents reflected a worsening of understaffing during the coronavirus pandemic.
A worker she spoke with one Saturday morning told the minister she was due to start her shift at 2pm and 16 people had already called in sick.
The current staffing crisis will put a brake on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s election pledge to “put the nurses back into nursing homes”.
The government’s Aged Care Amendment (Implementing Care Reform) Bill 2022 passed the House of Representatives last week. It has been referred to a Senate inquiry and is due to report by August 21. If passed, it will mandate a registered nurse being on shift in every aged care home around the clock from July 2023.
But the bill provides for an exemption to be granted under yet-to-be-determined criteria to providers unable to find staff.
Wells also introduced legislation almost identical to a bill the former government failed to pass before the election, which will set up a new funding model for the sector to start on October 1 and the first stage of minimum staffing levels.
The Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment (Royal Commission Response) Bill 2022 is expected to pass in the Senate on Monday, although the Greens are seeking an amendment to remove a provision making providers exempt from prosecution for using physical and chemical restraints. This is unlikely to succeed.
When the ABC Four Corners program that sparked the royal commission aired in 2018, exposing shocking abuse and neglect in aged care, Deb said while she had not witnessed that behaviour at the home she worked in, “it doesn’t surprise me that it happens”.
“It’s such a challenging industry,” she said.
Wells said while she was employed as a kitchen hand, she did relief work as a diversional therapist, facilitating recreational programs for the residents.
“It demonstrates that clearly there were staff shortages, even then,” she said.
The biggest change the minister saw when visiting aged care homes in her current role, she said, was the dramatic increase in care needs of an ageing population and as more Australians delayed going into residential care.
“I’ve noticed more frail people, more bed-bound people, now,” she said. “That also speaks to the complexity of … what we need to better address by way of food, for example.”
The government has promised to improve the food being given to residents after the royal commission highlighted disturbingly high rates of malnutrition, with the average home spending just $6 a day per resident on meals.
“You actually need to have the waft and the aroma of food coming from the kitchen to stimulate people’s enzymes and make people hungry and give people a sense of nostalgia,” Wells said.
Asked if her personal connection to the industry gave her a big sense of responsibility for aged care, the minister said: “Huge, and I’m heartened by the PM entrusting me with such a task.”
“I think that people in the aged care sector have been neglected for a long time. And I hope that they understand that, having me being the minister, I actually have some experience of life in the industry.”
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.
Most Viewed in Politics
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article