Journalist Rick Morton has just authored a report on aged care with Trish Prentice from the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute.
He says the Royal Commission did important work in highlighting the longstanding, systemic issues with aged care, but it overlooked something important - namely, aged care's cultural gap.
"It was one of the things that came up repeatedly, specifically, over and over again. But in the final recommendations, they kind of waved their hand and said look, if we figure out how to do individual choice and control for every single person getting an aged care service, then that automatically takes care of the cultural gap. And it kind of should be the other way around."
To begin with, anyone assessed for aged care is routinely placed on a waiting list, because the demand for home based services outstrips supply.
The Royal Commission found that as of June 2020, almost 103,000 older people were waiting for home care packages, with that figure expected to grow.
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