Page 1227 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 9 April 2008
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This meant that older people regularly remained in an acute-type bed in our public hospitals, rather than receiving care appropriate to their care needs—that is, receiving care at a higher level than necessary.
Over the last few months a number of projects have been completed that have delivered additional aged care beds and independent living units, all adding to the accommodation options available to older Canberrans. Southern Cross Care at Garran has added 70 beds and 14 independent living units. Centacare at Aranda has built 15 supported housing facilities. Goodwin at Farrer has 19 assisted living units. I have to say that I drove past them the other day; they look pretty good from the outside and I understand they are pretty good on the inside too. Ridgecrest at Page has 24 independent living units; Calvary has 100 beds and 78 independent living units; and Goodwin at Ainslie has constructed 103 beds and 22 independent living units.
In addition to those aged care facilities that have recently come online, there are additional developments under construction. Southern Cross Care, Campbell, is developing 40 beds; Illawarra Retirement Trust, Lake Ginninderra, is developing 100 beds and 150 independent living units; St Andrews at Hughes is constructing 74 beds; Mirinjani at Weston will have 64 beds; and Goodwin, Ainslie, will have 45 independent living units.
The proactive approach being implemented by the Stanhope government is achieving good results. The 2007 report on government services—ROGS—released in January this year, shows that the ACT leads the nation in assessing and caring in the community for older Canberrans. The ACT had the highest number of aged care assessments per 1,000 people in Australia, with 113 per 1,000, against a national average of 86.8. This number was made up of people aged over 70 and Indigenous people aged 50 to 69 years.
As Mr Gentleman has pointed out, the theme of this week’s Seniors Week is that growing older is all about living. Since 2003, the Stanhope government has had an actively ageing framework which highlights the importance of promoting healthy lifestyles. It is about extending preventative health measures to enable older people to remain independent and to get the best from life.
In developed countries such as Australia, older people are living longer and at the same time enjoying more years of greater quality. The actively ageing framework has been developed to provide a coordinated response to issues surrounding the provision of physical activity opportunities to older people within our community. It will serve to underpin the ACT government’s leading role in the development of appropriate policies and programs to encourage greater participation by older people in physical activity.
The Stanhope government, through a multitude of policy strategies and initiatives, is providing a comprehensive response to addressing the issues arising for older Canberrans. I emphasise specifically the statistics that I cited at the beginning of my speech. It seems that we have a baby boom in town at the moment, so in a few years time we will have a lot of people at the young end and a lot of people at the aged end. This morning, while driving in, I was listening to Radio National. They were talking
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