She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 19 and her marriage broke down when it all became too much, but Katy Skene considers herself one of the lucky ones.
At the age of 31, because there was nowhere else for her to go after a two-month stay in hospital, Ms Skene was moved into a nursing home in what she described as her darkest days. “I put on a brave face for my parents but deep down I wanted to burst into tears,” she said. “When the doors shut behind me, it felt like the doors were closing on my life.”
Ms Skene is one of 250 young people — 72 of them in Victoria — who were moved out of aged care and into more appropriate accommodation under a $244 million federal and state program. A further 244 young people were diverted away from aged care, and 456 received additional support services within aged care to better meet their needs, according to new figures released yesterday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
The federal and Victorian governments are providing ongoing funding to continue supporting people included in the program, but it is not taking on new applicants after its five-year term ended last June. While the hiatus has prompted calls for work to continue to help young people in nursing homes ahead of a fully implemented National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), for Ms Skene the program has delivered lasting benefits.
At her new supported accommodation in Williamstown, home to 10 people in two units, Ms Skene said: “We’re all younger, it’s fantastic. I can’t tell you the difference it makes. I went from having reheated hospital food at 4.30pm for dinner, to now having fresh food cooked at 6.30pm — a decent time.
Federal parliamentary secretary for disabilities Jan McLucas said the figures released yesterday showed a 35 per cent drop in young people living in nursing homes since 2005, but admitted there were still far too many young people inappropriately housed in them. The AIHW figures show that 658 people under 50 were living in nursing homes last June, including 133 in Victoria.
“Frankly, this is because of the failure of the state disability system to provide alternative accommodation,” Ms McLucas said. She said that the government was working to implement the NDIS and to providing $60 million in the meantime under a new fund that will provide homes for more than 150 people with a disability, including 10 apartments in a new high-rise development at Southbank.
The NDIS will provide individually tailored care and support to more than 1 million Australians with a disability and their carers and is projected to cost about $6.3 billion per year to run.
Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge has urged the federal government to introduce the NDIS “as a matter of growing urgency”, and said she agreed with a Productivity Commission recommendation that the Commonwealth should fund it due to its large revenue base.
A spokesman for the Young People in Nursing Homes Alliance, Alan Blackwood, said “serious growth in service funding” was needed in the lead-up to the scheme. “It’s not just about flicking a light switch and having a wonderful service — you’ve got to actually build it,” he said. “We need the bucket filled up to help people who have needs today and tomorrow.”
View Article (off-site)- Topics:
- Housing, NDIS, Systemic Advocacy
- Author:
- Kate Hagan
- Source:
- The Age
- Date published:
- Fri 27th Apr, 2012