Aged Care Quality Assessment Senate review
Effectiveness of the Aged Care Quality Assessment and accreditation framework for protecting residents from abuse and poor practices, and ensuring proper clinical and medical care standards are maintained and practiced.
The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) recently released its Final Report on the Inquiry into Elder Abuse, Elder Abuse - A National Legal Response (the Report).1
The Report made a number of recommendations to improve the quality of care for residential aged care services, including: establishing a serious incident response scheme in aged care legislation; reforms relating to the suitability of people working in aged care – enhanced employment screening processes – and ensuring that unregistered staff are subject to the proposed National Code of Conduct for Health Care Workers; regulating the use of restrictive practices in aged care; and national guidelines for the community visitors scheme regarding abuse and neglect of care recipients.2
The Law Council supports these recommendations and submits that this independent Inquiry should take account of the Report's recommendations, as detailed below.
The Law Council’s submission addresses the following issues:
- the effectiveness of the Framework for protecting residents from abuse and poor practices, and ensuring proper clinical and medical care standards are maintained and practiced;
- the adequacy and effectiveness of complaints handling processes at a state, territory and federal level, including consumer awareness and appropriate use of the available complaints mechanisms;
- the adequacy of injury prevention, monitoring and reporting mechanisms and the need for mandatory reporting and data collection for serious injury and mortality incidents; and
- the division of responsibility and accountability between residents (and their families), agency and permanent staff, aged care providers, and the state and territory and federal governments for reporting on and acting on adverse incidents.
You can read the full submission below.