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Age Care Essay
Age Care Essay
Old age is relatively a new factor in the history of the human race. Major
improvement in medical technology and health awareness allows us to live longer
and healthier. Moreover the opportunities for women and men have increased
such as employment and travel. Others spend their time longer on education or
they spend more time living their lives as a single person. With this, many women
and men are starting families at later ages than before and as a result besides the
effect of family planning, fewer babies are being born while the older populations
are getting older.
As people live longer in Australia, the high cost of supporting them in their
later life have a significant impact on funding and delivery services. Thus the
trends in age care has changed considerably over the past decade which was
driven by combination of demographics, changing care needs, increased funding
for community care and restructuring by service providers. In addition to this
recent trends, there are also increasing numbers of older Australians requiring
care of which the growth has driven a large increased in the number of subsidized
care places wherein in 1996, there were around 141 282 operational residential
and equivalent community care places in Australia. Thus, the aged care funding by
the Australian state and territory governments increased by $4.4 billion in 1995 -
1996 to $8.6 billion in 2006 ʹ 2007. Furthermore, there has been a shift towards
greater private funding of aged care services. As part of the structural reform of
the residential age care sector in 1997, accommodation payments and income
testing of daily care fess which was previously applied only to low level care were
introduced for all residential care. Additionally, residential care providers have
been able to request accommodation bond from clients entering low care or
making use of extra service high care facilities since 1997. Moreover, there is an
increasing emphasis on community care of which the government policy and the
choice of most aged people is to receive assistance in their own residence when
possible. Furthermore, with greater reliance on community care, there has also
been an increased in the support in funding for aged care workers and for respite
services. Like for example the combined payments and allowances for aged care
workers. The trend also presents that older people are more likely to use
residential aged care facilities for high level care compared in the past between
1998 and 2007 of which the proportion of all permanent residents receiving high
care increased from 58 to 70 percent. However, although the number of
residential care places has increased in recent years, the number of aged care
facilities has declined by 4.7 percent from 3,015 in 1998 to 2, 872 in 2007.
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