Aged care providers have the necessities covered – food, shelter and a place to sleep.
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But an expert who specialises in helping people aged 70 to 90 live well has urged residential facilities to go beyond the basics and start focusing on their clients’ quality of life.
Dr Mike Rungie, who will run a workshop with aged care providers in Hobart on Wednesday, said ageism was preventing Australia help its elderly live life to the fullest.
“You become frail and it’s very hard for your view to be heard,” he said.
“But they are overwhelmingly telling us that what you do matters more than anything else and that never stops.
“They say ‘The care is there, but I want to keep living my life’.”
Dr Rungie has travelled the United States to visit a needle factory staffed by elderly people.
He said he was surprised to meet the factory’s best quality control worker: a blind 90-year-old woman.
Conducting his research in Australia, he has met elderly people keen to join a choir, learn Italian and gain employment.
He said it was not enough for residential aged care facilities to offer bingo a few times a week.
“Our analysis of high-quality facilities offering good care with a range of entertainment programs on the whole score very poorly on quality of life,” he said.
“Levels of depression are really high in residential aged care.
“Being really well cared for but not having a lot going on in your life is a really challenging way to live.”
Dr Rungie suggested aged care providers take notes from the nation’s best homecare providers after elderly people were put in charge of what they received.
“In offering people choice and control, we should be starting to see people starting to make interesting choices about how they want to start looking at their quality of life,” he said.
“People will scream about care if you get it wrong – they don’t scream about quality of life if you get it wrong.”