Gold Coast's growing aged population driving federal aged care reform implementation

The Gold Coast, which has one of the highest proportions of residents aged 65 and over of any major Australian city, is a closely watched implementation site for the federal government's aged care reforms flowing from the Royal Commission's recommendations — reforms that are transforming the way approximately 18,000 Gold Coast residents receive in-home and residential care.

The most visible change for Gold Coasters is the new Support at Home program, which from July this year replaced the previous home care package system with a more flexible funding model that allows recipients to direct their funding across a wider range of support services without the previous administrative complexity. Early consumer research conducted by the My Aged Care helpline showed 68 per cent of recipients had found the new system easier to navigate.

Federal Aged Care Minister Anika Wells visited Gold Coast aged care facilities last month, meeting with residents and care workers to assess the on-the-ground experience of the reforms. She said the stories she heard confirmed both the genuine improvement in quality that the mandatory staffing standards were delivering and the genuine workforce pressure that providers were managing. "Getting the staffing levels right has taken effort, but the residents are the ones who notice the difference," she said.

Gold Coast has a particular concentration of private sector aged care, with approximately 85 per cent of residential care places in for-profit facilities compared with 65 per cent nationally. The reform package's quality and transparency provisions are expected to have significant impact on this market over the next two years as star ratings and care minute reporting becomes publicly available for all facilities.

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