Seniors advocacy workers say there are ways to help our older people access government support services

Gwenda Darling says some older people can use help from people around them. (Supplied)

Aged care advocate Gwenda Darling says it is time to apply the adage “it takes a village” to both ends of life.

The 71-year-old Palawa woman is what many would consider an expert in aged care matters, having lent her voice and lived experience to the Aged Care Council of Elders, National Older Persons Reference Group and as a Dementia Australia advocate.

Ms Darling, a former social worker, says that experience has made her see how the complex systems and language around aging is leaving many others behind.

“I’m growing up with the system and I think that makes it easier for me to navigate because I’ve got the insights,” she said.

“I think that a lot of people don’t know what services are available and they don’t know how to even start the journey.

“If you’re across the digital divide how do you get started when you ring somebody up and they say go to our website?”

Ms Darling said that was where the village should come in — in the form of family, friends, or neighbours.

“There are systems out there, you’ve just got to tap into them,” she said.

“We’ve said for a long time that it takes a community to raise a child, now we’re at a time where community needs to really look out for its elders.”

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found older people could make up 21-23 per cent of the population by 2066.

There are steps people can take to make sure they have access to as much support as possible.

Getting started

My Aged Care is the gateway to the three main forms of aged care in Australia: the Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP), Home Care Packages, and residential aged care.

The Older Persons Advocacy Network offers assistance to understand how they work.

The free, confidential and independent service connects people to 200 advocates around the country.

Older Persons Advocacy Network chief executive Craig Gear said its purpose was to make sure older people had a voice, knew what their rights were, and that those rights were upheld in relation to aged care services.

“We provided 37,000 cases of advocacy, support and information last year — just over half of those were people seeking information about the system or about their rights in the system,” he said.

“So that says to me that there is still a challenge to get the right information at the right time about the right services.”

Mr Gear said while the network hoped the new aged care act would address some of the issues, a self-advocacy tool-kit had also been developed to give people the knowledge they needed.

“For someone who is alone, someone that might be socially isolated, or someone maybe that’s lost a partner … those government services can be really hard to engage with,” he said.

“We actually need a system that’s much more streamlined and easier to navigate.”

What happens next?

People who have been in touch with the Older Persons Advocacy Network are then connected with an advocacy service based in their state or territory.

Vulnerable people who have no-one else who can support them might then be referred to a local care finder service.

Care finders will visit older people, usually in person, and walk them through every step of accessing aged care support.

ADALink provides the service in southern Queensland, which takes in Brisbane South, Ipswich and Toowoomba, through to rural and remote communities.

Manager Terri-Ann Dwyer said her team had driven thousands of kilometres in its first six months to meet more than 470 people face to face.

“We’ve been able to assist hundreds of people, who are hidden, who are doing it tough,” she said.

“We’ve had clients tell us that they had chosen not to take cancer treatments, because they felt nobody cared … if they stay or not.

“We’ve had folks to share the most intimate, traumatic, exciting, wonderful moments of their lives with us and that helps us understand what’s important for that person.”

Ms Dwyer said, in her experience, older people were often hesitant to reach out for help but there was no need to wait for a crisis.

“We’re working with a generation who feels there’s somebody else worse off than me,” she said.

“What we say is that there’s enough for everybody to go around and unless the federal government is aware of what’s really required in our communities, they can’t possibly attribute the right amount of funding to it.”

The business of caring

Former Centrelink worker Kerri Zerbst is part of a growing industry providing third-party support to people navigating aged care services and their associated paperwork.

“It’s becoming a new field because it’s so complex,” she said.

“I have had people with no family here, or they’re living overseas now, they’ve got no access to anybody at all to help them get through it.”

Ms Zerbst said her clients were often missing out on payments they were entitled to.

“They’re too scared to apply or go in — it’s too hard to do,” she said.

“But there’s a lot of self-funded retirees that should be getting a part pension payment.

“There’s a lot of older people — husbands caring for wives, wives caring for husbands — that aren’t getting the carers allowance that they’re entitled to because no one talks about carers allowance.”

Ms Zerbst said she believed her line of work would only get busier as more people moved into the aged care system.

“We’ve just got to make sure we’re getting everything of all the people that got us to where we are now. We must support them and make sure they’re not missing out.”