Aged Care.

An old man in Sydney

Hold onto your seatbelts folks, it’s going to be a rough ride. This Monday a TV programme on ABC 4 Corners will feature the state of Australia’s Aged Care. It will be broadcast in two sessions. Something to look forward to during the following Monday evening as well. The Government getting wind of this program, decided to now have a Royal Commission into aged care. Royal Commissions are made to quieten down things.  It shows the Government ‘doing’ something. We sometime get a bit restless and there is nothing like a Royal Commission for the Government to subdue us into passive acceptance of whatever might be happening.

Aged care has always been the weedy neglected garden of few countries, including Australia. If you survived the years of receiving the miserable pension, you have been well warmed up for the end of it all in a retirement village. Many of you would have seen the footage of several videos on TV whereby elderly aged-care recipients were bashed up or assaulted.  The videos were a result of family members’ concern that often their elderly parents showed repeated bruising or festering wounds. A daughter or son would install a secret camera hoping to catch the assault and have it as proof. In many cases it showed assaults taking place. Police took action and a paddy wagon was shown whereby the nurse was led into. That’s just one case where he was caught.

How often does this happen? I can’t say I look forward to that kind of journey.  If it happens I will not keep any slippers near my bed or other implements that might get used as weapons to attack me. Certainly not hard cover books, magazines, hard fruit, coconuts. Just imagine getting hit over the head by a copy ‘Of Human Bondage.’

It is more a reason to stay well away from nursing homes no matter how well they advertise themselves. I don’t believe footage of an elderly retiree around the communal aged care home ‘The Setting Sun’,  sipping a chardonnay while swirling around with a svelte 89 year old. The elderly gent is more likely to get bashed up by his own slippers as shown in one video where an enraged nurse hoed into the defenceless old man.

It’s not getting any easier. Is it?