Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 1:08:40 to 1:15:14
Major aged care providers argue for a phased transition to the Support at Home program to manage risks and ensure service continuity.
Topics: Social services, Health
Speakers: Tim Hicks, Marcela Carrasco, Unknown Speaker, Penny Allman-Payne, Speaker 12, Maria McLaughlin-Rolfe
Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for appearing before the Senate committee today and thank you also for your submissions. 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 record please state your full names and the capacity in which you appear today and I'm actually going to start with Hammond Clark online. Do we have someone from Hammond Clark online?
Hi this is uh Mercela Carcuso, Hammond Care.
Thank you very much. Uh and at the table, starting on my left.
Tim Hicks, Executive General Manager of Policy and Advocacy for Bolton Clarke.
Uh Georgina Watson, Head of Policy, Uniting Care Australia.
Maria McLaughlin Rolfe, uh Group Executive for Aged and Community Care Services of Blue Care in Queensland.
Uh thank you very much for appearing today. I'm conscious that there's a number of witnesses and we don't have a lot of time, so if you could keep your opening remarks really brief so that we do have time for questions. Uh and I might start with um uh uh Hammond Care online. So, Ms. Carcuso.
Uh thank you. So, Mercela Carcuso, I'm the Executive General Manager for Hammond Care Home Care. Uh we uh provide services across um across the state, uh the country, uh both um aged care, home care, health and hospitals with a specialization in dementia and palliative care. Um we have a 6,000 strong team dedicated to the care um and support of our clients, uh residents and patients, uh supported by 850 volunteers who enable us to do uh compassionate care with expertise um focusing on complex needs for those we serve. Um our submission uh centered on the role of cottage respite um and the need to ensure that this very unique service is block funded um as we consider the transition into supported home. Um as well as really strongly stressing the communication, which was also highlighted by the previous witnesses, uh the communication not just to the sector, but to the clients and the people we serve um to ensure that they we can maintain continuity, we we reduce the confusion, um that we've seen through the Supported Home transition, um and make sure that the best outcomes are achieved for the older Australians we all serve.
Uh thank you very much. Uh Mr. Hicks.
Thank you. Bolton Clarke is Australia's largest independent not-for-profit provider of aged care. Our view is that one, major decisions about the future of Commonwealth Home Support should wait until after the implementation of Supported Home has been finalized. This includes settling uh major outstanding debates around pricing and co-contributions. Two, we don't need wholesale change. A Coda survey conducted in July-August 2025 and released on Wednesday found that 91% of people were happy with their home care services. Big, complex changes create distraction and burnout. A simple path forward would be to extend the Supported Home co-contribution rates to CHSP after we make any course corrections and indeed that extension to CHSP might help also help offset some of the fiscal costs of um reducing co-contributions in some of the areas that they're currently problematically applied to. Um B, uh continue to use broad service type approvals for individuals to avoid the sort of over-under assessment problems we see with the individual plans and budgets that have um been approved under Supported Home. And C, keep block grants, but improve equity, competition, and choice through better commissioning arrangements and linking funding levels to the number of people in an area that get an approval. Um we would be particularly concerned about moving away from block funding for certain service types, for example, community nursing, which needs expert quality assurance, specialist expertise, rapid response capacity, and health system integration, but there are challenges with introducing individualized budgets for very small um volumes of service across all service
Care Aged Care Network delivers services across all states and territories in
the program operates. If we take the current combined waitlist for Supported Home and the estimated number of people accessing the CHSP, even accounting for people that are both using the CHSP and on a waitlist for A staged approach will minimize administrative risk for providers and enable better outcomes for older Australians. Finally, once this transition does occur, block funding should be retained, as we've heard today, um for services which are unlikely to suit a fee-for-service model, though are essential to maintaining the independence of older people. These
services include meals, transport, social support, and cottage respite. Um at Uniting Care Australia, we're committed to ensuring all people, regardless of means, can access quality care, and a a transition of this scale