Inside Our Rest Homes: What's Really Going On

The New Zealand Herald’s front page article today promising to “lift the lid on what’s really going on in our rest homes” focuses on isolated incidences that occurred over the last three years and which had been resolved, the New Zealand Aged Care Association says.

“There is a story to tell in the aged care sector, but it’s not one the Herald wants to tell. The truth is that New Zealand rest homes, hospitals and dementia units provide a high degree of care delivery, despite continuous and chronic under funding,” the chief executive of the NZACA, Mr Martin Taylor, says.

The incidences that the senior Herald reporters used as examples to demonstrate “shortfalls in aged care” are historical, occurring in the last three years, had been thoroughly investigated at the time and resolved through an effective, multiple-level complaint system involving the local District Health Boards, the Ministry of Health and the Health and Disability Commissioner.

Today’s front page article about a husband of a female resident, who is receiving short-term respite care, being involved in a relationship with another resident, fails to address the full facts of the situation nor did it address the rights of elderly residents.

“This is sad and difficult situation, but the aged care facility must obey the law and allow residents to make their own decisions, where they are capable of doing so,” Mr Taylor said.

The husband, the wife and the other man in the article are all adults judged by the law to be consenting and capable of making their own decisions. “The law states a rest home operator must abide by the decisions of residents who are capable of making their own decisions. For example, if a resident refuses food or medicine or wants to drink alcohol, smoke or spend some time in private with another resident by agreement, the aged care facility is legally bound to allow it.”

In this situation, the husband and wife concerned were not forced to keep using the facility in question following the incident and they had a choice of around eight facilities within a few minutes’ drive, the NZACA said.

Every industry requires accountability and the aged care sector, which looks after our country’s most vulnerable people, is no different. It’s important that the country’s providers are held to a standard that anyone who has elderly parents or grandparents has come to expect. At the same time, it’s also important that complicated issues are given a fair hearing and not overshadowed by articles aimed at merely showing negative stories.

What’s really going on is more accurately reflected in an annual Colmar Brunton Rest Home Survey, which found only 6 percent of people who had experience of aged residential care felt it was poor with 70 percent saying it was good or very good.

Mr Taylor added that: “What’s really going on is also reflected in the Health and Disability Complaints system – only one person in every 1000 made a valid complaint about aged residential care in 2012, and this year so far, only 38 complaints nationwide have been upheld from the 40,000 elderly people who use aged care services every year.”

ENDS

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