The APS has a long history of advocating for the health and wellbeing of older Australians, and this includes promoting access to psychosocial interventions regardless of where people live and whether they are engaged with aged care services.
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was established in 2018. In October 2020, the Australian Government announced (in response to a Special Report by the Royal Commission into Aged Care and Covid-19) that people living in residential aged care would be eligible to access psychological services via the MBS Better Access initiative during the pandemic.
This is a fantastic outcome for aged care residents, and the APS has and will continue to advocate for ongoing access beyond the pandemic, to ensure these services are available to residents as they are for anyone living in the community.
View submission to Counsel Assisting’s report to the Royal Commission (November 2020)
APS advocacy extends well beyond MBS items in residential aged care. For example, in our initial submission to the Royal Commission, the APS highlighted:
- The effectiveness of psychological interventions and their importance in assessing and addressing the mental health of older people
- The importance of effective assessment of older people’s decision-making capacity
- The need for behavioural interventions which avoid or minimise restraint
- Enabling other clinicians and care providers to obtain the input of psychologists
- The negative impact on older people and their loved ones of long waiting times for community care packages
- The important considerations for supporting older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in remote communities.
View initial submission to the Royal Commission (October 2019)
The APS will continue to advocate for the mental health needs of older people, including:
- Funding for neuropsychological assessments of older people at risk of mental health or co-occurring neurocognitive problems
- Strategies to support placements and supervision of provisional psychologists working in aged care to increase access to psychological services and build workforce capacity
- Mental health training for aged care workers
- Ongoing research into aged care (both community and residential) as well as interventions to support health healthy ageing more broadly, and the contributions of older people to our communities as an important measure to combat ageism.