Aged Care Services in Australia
A. Main Industry Analysis: Aged Care
1. Definition and Meaning
Aged care is the facility that provides services to the old age people for daily living and nursing care. It can be defined as “the system that caters for Australians aged 65 and over (and Indigenous Australians aged 50 and over) who can no longer live without support in their own home. Care is provided in people’s homes, in the community and in residential aged care facilities (nursing homes) by a wide variety of providers” (Grove, 2016, p. 1). Therefore, aged care is the support and service provided to the older people, who are no longer able to take care of themselves. The support and care is provided to older population through appropriate programs and voluntary services. The public sector and private sector are equally involved in Australia to provide quality services to aged population (McIntosh, and Phillips, 2003). The demand of aged care facilities and services is very high in Australia because of the continuously ageing population. According to the study of Ergas and Paolucci (2011), the population of Australia is substantially aging and the number of the aged population will increase to 500,000 in 2020.
2. Important Aged Care Activities and Scope
Some important activities that are carried out by the aged care sector in Australia are flexible care long term residential care, short term restorative care, transition care and Multi-Purpose Services (MPS) Programme etc (Grove, 2016). The flexible care is the provision that provide the care according to different needs of the users other than mainstream residential care. The provision of transition care includes providing 12 weeks of care and rehabilitation after the patients are discharged from hospital.
(I.C. RS 6088)