Stand Up. You Don't Have Time To Sit Down. | FACES with Melissa Reader | Club Sandwich

Hi.

My goodness, hasn't it been quite a. Quite an eight days or so since we dropped the campaign? So this is Families for Aged Care Equity and Support. It's really giving families across the country. There are hundreds and thousands of them who are stuck in the queue of the aged care waiting system. You know, they're either trying to figure out the front door and get all the navigation worked out or they've done that hard bit. Sarah. And they've got a letter saying, mum's got approval but that doesn't mean she's got the funding yet. That's another 12 month wait and that is just horrendous. Like the Club Sandwich community have responded hugely to this and we know why, because they're plugging the gaps.

Yeah.

So the government, the government have four numbers. Bit slippery. Four numbers from the same filing cabinet. We have brought this movement together to say, actually we want one number and we want it published every quarter and we, we also want the number of people who are dying while they're waiting for their care to be published. That is 13 Australians a day. That could be. We think that's the number from last year. So it's going to be higher this year.

But it's not publicly available now. That could be your parent. My parent. It's three and a half times the National Road toll and we deserve some transparency and accountability. These numbers are a bit buried at the moment. So it's a pretty simple and honest ask. Count each quarter because you can't track and fix what you're not measuring.

So We've had over 2,000 families join us and you're like, you know what, that's a big lift, you know, to make the commitment to do it. It only takes a minute, but there's probably 20 for every one that signed that thinks they'll get round to it. We've had real media take up, which has been so great. To take this on TV and the radio, but the stories, so there's families sending in videos and I just want to share a couple of those with you right here. My mother passed away in May, still waiting for her home care package. One she was assessed four months earlier. Straight after that I had to personally campaign to the politicians to get my father's pre approved funding released before the same thing happened to him. I did contact the Senator's office and they were helpful. When I contacted the minister's office, all I got was a letter of condolences and a grief hotline sympathy. Instead of a system that actually works,

the aged care system is designed to frustrate people applying for home care for their family members. By the time we worked our way through it, funding was approved but never delivered. And that was took 15 months and at that point our mother in law had suffered two major falls and ended up in a geriatric ward in the hospital on two occasions we were incapable of looking after her at home. The hospital management just wanted to free up the bed and were pressuring us to get her out of there. They gave us names of nursing homes. When we spoke to the nursing homes, they didn't have positions, beds available and when, especially when they found out she was dementia, even though she was immobile, they weren't interested in putting us on a waiting list. So the whole system was broken from our point of view and still is.

Mum was approved for the highest level of home care package in January. While we waited, I was helping her with just about everything. Showering, dressing, getting from one room to another, her medications, all her cooking and cleaning. When I rang up to find out how much longer it might be before the package came through, we were told we were low priority because Mum was living with us. So the fact that we'd stepped up to do everything we could to help Mum actually ended up counting against us. In the end it just all got too much and we had to make the decision to put Mum into residential care, which was not what any of us wanted. The cruel irony was that about four weeks later we got the approval letters for home modifications and equipment, but it was all just too little too late for us. To be honest. This has been one of the hardest six months of my life and it's not an experience I would wish on anyone.

My father died waiting for a my aged care package. He was 90 when he died and it never came. Now I find myself in the same situation. I live in a small country town and I've been assessed for Commonwealth Home support program and all I need is the meals from that. I've tried and I've looked for the last year for someone who would provide a home delivered meal on that program and there is no one in this town that can provide that. So I go hunting and you know, to see what I can do about this. And then I'm told that everybody is going off that CHSP and they will be going on to a stay at home program for that, which is something different. Now I've had to apply for that stay at home program and now I'm on a list, another list, which will take up to six weeks for approval and then up to a year after that for funding. It's happening all over again and it's just not good enough.

these, like a real pain stories of the sandwich generation. This is what, these are all the gaps that are being invisibly plugged and held together. No one's measuring it, no one's counting it. And we think that it's about time we did, which is the whole movement behind faces. So we did lodge our Senate submission on Friday. So proud to have that in. And as I said, Over 2,000 families already on board. So message out to the clubbers. It'll only take you a minute. We know you've got a busy day, but it'll only take you a minute or two. Go onto faces.org au and be counted.

We've got to do something about this. We are at the very beginning of this aging curve and we deserve more transparency and accountability than what we're getting.

It's $100 billion according to Deloitte's estimates. The other thing we're going to do, and we'll come back and talk about this on Club Sandwich, is we're going to find the real number of the sandwich generation in Australia.

Because those figures are underreported.

Nope.

We're going to be doing that in the next four to five weeks. So I'll come back and talk about that as well.

This is very special that you've done this.

Shaggy Sarah is so generous in what she shares in this ABC Compass episode. Incredible families that have stepped up and really kind of pulled back the curtains of their life, haven't they, and shared everything they're juggling and all that mess of love and duty and obligation. It's a really special segment, Clubbers, so don't miss it.

Yeah.

Really.

Isn't she brave too, how she told it?

Yeah.

So I think this is something that we need to do more of, really find ways to bring these stories to light. So it's just an open invitation, Clubbers, if you feel like you want to share what's going on in your family and your sandwich generation story, you know where we are. Helloubsandwich.community get in touch. We would love to talk to you.

If you've just listened to that and you thought, that's my family too, we're in that queue. This is where you go. It's called Faces. It's a family led campaign asking for one honest count of the number of people waiting for their aged care funding and the people who die while they're waiting. Add your name at Vera Guide Faces. It'll just take you a minute. It's super simple. And nothing appears anywhere else without your say so. They call it policy. We call it family. Join us and put a face to the wait.