Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 0:00 to 17:55
Representatives from Meals on Wheels highlight the critical role of the Commonwealth Home Support Programme and the risks of transitioning to individualized funding.
Topics: Social services, Health
Speakers: Claudia Odello, Penny Allman-Payne, Leeanne Wright, Unknown Speaker
All right. Good morning, everyone. Thanks very much for being here today. I declare open this hearing of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into the transition of the Commonwealth Home Support Program to the Support at Home Program. I begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to their elders past and present. And I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who will be joining us today. The committee will be conducting today's hearing via video conference and in person. I'm Senator Penny Wong and Payne and in the room I have with me Senators Askew and Ruston and Senator Collins by tele and video conference. These are public proceedings being video streamed live via the Parliament's website and a Hansard transcript is being made. I remind all witnesses that in giving evidence to the committee they are protected by parliamentary privilege. It is unlawful for anyone to threaten or disadvantage a witness on account of evidence given to a committee and such action may be treated by the Senate as a contempt. It is also a contempt to give false or misleading evidence. Witnesses also have a right to request to be heard in camera. If a witness objects to answering a question they should state the ground upon which the objection is made and the committee will determine whether it will insist on an answer having regard to the ground which is claimed. If the committee determines to insist on an answer a witness may request that the answer be given in camera. I remind senators of their obligations under the behavior code for Australian parliamentarians to treat witnesses with dignity, courtesy, fairness and respect. And I remind committee members and witnesses who are appearing via video conference and who are not speaking to please mute your microphones. I now welcome representatives from Meals on Wheels Australia. I understand that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses giving evidence to Senate committees has been provided to you. For the Hansard [snorts] record could you please state your full name and the capacity in which you appear
today? Sure. My name's Claudia Odello. I'm the CEO of Meals on Wheels New South Wales.
Thank you. Leanne Wright and I'm the service manager of Blayney Meals on Wheels and social support services multi-purpose outlet.
Good morning and welcome and thank you for giving us your time. I'm now going to invite you to make a short opening statement noting that we do have your submission. So if you could keep it brief so that we have plenty of time to ask questions. So over to you for your opening statement.
Chair and senators, thank you for the opportunity to appear today. I'm here on behalf of Meals on Wheels and the 590 local Meals on Wheels services that operate in communities across Australia. Meals on Wheels is a trusted brand that's been embedded in local communities and operating for more than 70 years. It was built by the community for the community. We deliver nutritious meals, regular social contact and a simple well-being check often to older people who are frail or socially isolated or at risk of becoming isolated who are at risk of malnutrition or who are living in communities with very limited alternatives. The reason the Meals on Wheels model works is because it's simple. It's designed to be quick, practical and very low burden. Your typical Meals on Wheels client is someone who's got lower level needs. They might need help with meals, some transport to doctor's appointments, a little bit of social support and maybe a little bit of help with basic tasks like cleaning. They don't need a complex package. Meals on Wheels is funded under the Commonwealth Home Support Program or CHSP which is block funded. The client pays for their meal so it's not free. The contribution that the client pays covers the costs of the ingredients that go into that meal and the CHSP funding is the stable base that makes the delivery possible. So it includes things like rent, staff time, volunteer expenses, overheads, food safety and the real cost of actually delivering that service. CHSP matters. It's the legacy system and the front door and early intervention layer of aged care and it's proven to work. It provides rapid access to low risk supports that prevent deterioration, reduce hospital presentations, support safe discharges from hospitals and delay escalation to higher cost care. More than 830,000 older Australians receive the CHSP services. And as Australia ages the role of CHSP services like Meals on Wheels will become more critical, not less. But we need to be frank. Meals on Wheels services are under extreme pressure reporting that CHSP's already absorbing people with much higher complex needs to what they have traditionally. And services are responding to crisis demand without additional funding or policy support. Many services are delivering CHSP funded meal targets and managing local wait lists. This is contributing to workforce burnout and putting pressure on Meals on Wheels services, our volunteer force and our operations. And uncertainty is already doing damage. Ongoing uncertainty about CHSP beyond 2027 is destabilizing organizations like Meals on Wheels. Services can't confidently recruit, invest or plan for demand and innovation when the future is setting so unclear. We support reforms that strengthen rights, transparency and quality in aged care but we're very concerned about abolishing CHSP and rolling it into Support at Home after 1 July 2027 and the risks are foreseeable. And they're also avoidable. So demand is rising so that's due to the aging population. We know that's it's coming, it's here and it's due to get worse and people are now have higher needs because they're waiting so long to get into the system. But many Meals on Wheels services report CHSP funded targets haven't kept pace leading to wait lists and services delivering above their funded outputs. CHSP's increasingly supporting people with higher complexity but the program settings and funding haven't been adapted which creates pressure on the ground and on local service capacity. Then there's the underinvestment and the poor cousin problem. CHSP is has been under reviewed and under invested for years despite carrying the large share of day-to-day in-home support. There's no contemporary funding model with many providers arguing the funding model hasn't had a major modern review in over a decade despite rising costs, compliance expectations and demand. Then there's volunteering workforce strain. So service growth freezing contributes to burnout. Recruitment, retention issues and pressure on staff and volunteers with so much additional red tape for them just to be able to deliver a meal in their local community, remain connected in their local community and engage in the social element of Meals on Wheels benefits the client and the volunteer as well. So we shouldn't forget the volunteer and the impact it has on them. Then there's thin markets and Leanne comes from a thin market service so she will be able to speak to that a little bit more. And in rural and remote communities there are no other options. So Meals on Wheels is at the heart of those communities. It's where people knock on the door first to find out where to go, what to do and how to access support. So Meals on Wheels services carry fixed costs and without stable adequate funding they can't maintain reliable delivery or scale to meet the needs of people coming through the system. Uncertainty beyond 2027 with CHSP's future is destabilizing planning and investment. So reducing innovation which has always been one of the key aspects of Meals on Wheels, being able to innovate quickly at a local on the ground grassroots level. Sector support and development funding, there's also uncertainty around that. That funding comes out of the CHSP bucket and it's um a group of workers who are funded to actually build capacity of these local small CHSP organizations in communities around the country. We're not sure what's happening to that after June 2026, which is also um affecting planning. Uh
Ms. Odello, I'm just conscious of time. We've only got about 18 minutes left, so I'm wondering if you could wrap up
really quickly cuz we've got some
questions we'd really like to
>> No worries. So, our core recommendation is really straightforward. It's the government should commit now to retain and expand CHSP beyond 2027 as a separate program that complements Support at Home. That commitment must be backed by growth funding, a funding model review, and thin market protections. And we need immediate action now to funded targets. Older people need meals quickly, locally, and reliably, and Meals on Wheels has been doing that in Australia for over 70 years. Thank you. Thanks
very much, Ms. Odello. I might kick us off. First of all, thank you very much for appearing today, and thank you for the services that Meals on Wheels provides. I know it's a vital lifeline for many older people in our community. I guess what I'm interested to unpack a little more is it's clearly Meals on Wheels' position that CHSP should be retained rather than folded into Supported Home, and not withstanding that you're highlighting that there is underfunding, so there clearly needs to be some more investment in CHSP. I'm interested in understanding what you see the barriers or the risks if a service like Meals on Wheels was folded into Supported Home rather than being a standalone service. So, what actually would the problems and the risks be?
>> Yeah. So, we're actually already seeing with the introduction of Supported Home some of those things come through. So, because Supported Home is funded on delivery of that service, so not in advance in arrears, local Meals on Wheels services won't have the funding to open their doors regardless of if they have one client or 500 clients. There won't be funding there for them to do that. So, that's a huge risk. It's from a workforce perspective, the additional compliance within Supported Home, and the requirements and pressures on volunteers is starting to come through from feedback from members, and volunteers are walking away cuz they just want to deliver a meal to Mary down the road. They don't need the red tape. Do you want to speak to a specific example?
>> Yeah, I can give you a great example. Yeah. So, quite a few of my clients that have moved across to home care packages or Supported Home actually now contacting me and saying, "How do I opt out and come back to Commonwealth Home Support?" So, that's alarm bells in itself. Um one of the main or major concerns for our region, I can speak on behalf of a lot of, you know, small rural thin markets. So, a thin market is where Blayney, we'll take that as an example, we are the only provider in town. We cover 1,600 square meters. Miles? Miles. Sorry. [laughter] Kilometers, actually. And we the main town's 5 km radius forms 50% of my clients. The external towns of the shire can be 70-80 km away, and it's it's not sealed road. It could be, you know, you need a four-wheel drive to get up and down. That forms the other 50%. These people are so isolated. We don't have transport. We don't have a bus. We don't have a train. Yes, we do have a train at Blayney station that goes to Orange or Blayney station that goes to Bathurst, but those people that live on the outskirts have got to get in. So, Blayney forms 19% of Sorry, over the top the total population of 7,000, 19% are over 65. That's alarm bells. We're higher than the New South Wales average. The New South Wales average is 16%. Um the health public health data indicates by 2030 we could be up around the 25-27%. Again, alarm bells. So, you can now see the pressure that we've got on our service, our little service that delivers a meal. Not just a meal. We are that contact. We do the welfare check. We do the hoarder and squalor checks, the cluttering. That's where your falls are. We do the check of the pantries, of your freezers, fridges. Again, malnutrition, out of date foods. You know, they get sick. They get unwell. They don't have food. Food is a lifeline. It's an essential. It's not It shouldn't be built into the same category as mowing a lawn. It should be an essential criteria in the model.
So, so in relation to that, you talked about the timing of funding. Um what about in relation to the way in which it's funded? So, is there an advantage over, for example, for the block funding model as opposed to individualized payment of services? And And if so, could you elaborate just a little bit on that, and then I'll hand
It actually receiving that block funding allows these services to open their doors in the communities that they support, and it allows them to provide quick support. You can't wait months to be assessed to get a meal. That's when, you know, you'll you'll lose them. They'll end up in hospital or even worse. So, having that block funding in advance allows those Meals on Wheels services to do what they do best, which is provide that support to people when they need it as they need it. So, if I'm
an older person and I contact Meals on Wheels and say I need your assistance, what is the process that I have to go through to get get get onto the service?
Great question. So, currently the model is that the client must be registered with My Aged Care. They then await a a formal assessment. And that assessment um assesses them whether they should be Commonwealth Home Support or escalated to the higher higher levels, higher um needs. now, with Commonwealth Home Support, there's probably a wait time, average wait time at the moment, of from being registered to being assessed to being referred by that RAS team or the assessment team, of anywhere between three and eight months. Yeah, okay. Now, during that time, they get unwell. They haven't been looked after. They haven't been serviced. So, obviously, they're past the Commonwealth Home Support. They're now escalated to SARS.
Can I Can I just get a clarification? Is that since the new act was introduced? Was it a simpler process before the new act, or it's always That's always been
the case. No. Meals on Wheels services, if someone calls them and says, "I need a meal," or if a hospital needs to discharge somebody and they need meals urgently, that service will bend over backwards and get a meal out to that client same day or next day. That's at
our cost, though.
Correct. But we do it because we care for the client. Yeah, okay. I'll hand
over the call. Senator Ruston. Just to