Speaker 1: I was on a friend's house boat at the time
Speaker 1: and dived off the house boat into the water.
Speaker 2: Neil Radley was on a day off from his job
Speaker 2: as a truck driver, enjoying the sun with some friends
Speaker 2: in regional Victoria. He looked off the side of the
Speaker 2: house boat, no branches, the water was clear. He decided
Speaker 2: to jump. What he hadn't seen was a sandbar.
Speaker 3: When I passed out in the water, my friends, I think.
Speaker 1: Thought I was mucking around trying to hold my breath,
Speaker 1: then realized that I wasn't.
Speaker 3: They dragged me out of the water. They got the
Speaker 3: water out of my stomach.
Speaker 1: I can remember that I was semi consciously all I
Speaker 1: was going through all that, And I can remember when
Speaker 1: it really hit home was when the ambulance came there
Speaker 1: and they asked me whether I could move my hands
Speaker 1: or my toes, And then I realized that nothing was moving,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that really And then I thought, Wow, I've
Speaker 1: really done something big this time.
Speaker 2: Neil remembers being carried into a chopper, the door closing
Speaker 2: and the chopper taking off. After that, his memory goes blank.
Speaker 1: I woke up one day and I see you, and
Speaker 1: you got all these machines, bitmen and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and it was a bit of a shock. You just, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's coming to the realization that your whole life is
Speaker 1: going to change. You don't realize the time how much
Speaker 1: it's going to change, but you know it's never going
Speaker 1: to be the same as what it.
Speaker 3: Was, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: And it was in the ICU for eight weeks. It
Speaker 2: was here he was told he'd broken his neck. He
Speaker 2: later learned he would live the rest of his life
Speaker 2: as a high needs quadriplegic. He realized he needed somewhere
Speaker 2: to live and his options were limited.
Speaker 3: My mom and dad are in there like their eighties.
Speaker 1: If they had been a bit younger, they probably would
Speaker 1: have looked after me, but it was too much to
Speaker 1: ask for them. And that's so then they sort of thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, because the NIS wasn't in, then I've virtually.
Speaker 3: Slipped through the cracks and there was nothing for me.
Speaker 3: So age care was about the only choice that I had.
Speaker 2: Neil was in his early forties and suddenly he was
Speaker 2: dealing with the prospect of living the rest of his
Speaker 2: life in aged care. They are currently close to fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred younger people with disabilities living in aged care across Australia.
Speaker 2: The federal government wants to pass a law that could
Speaker 2: see that number rise. From Schwartz Media, I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 2: This is seven AM today. Neil Radley on the reality
Speaker 2: of living in aged care and The Saturday Papers senior
Speaker 2: reporter Rick Morton on the plan that might make the
Speaker 2: problem worse. It's Tuesday, August thirteenth. Neil. When it became
Speaker 2: clear that you would need to move into an aged
Speaker 2: care home after your accident, what was your first thought.
Speaker 1: Well, I thought, basically, if someone said to you, what
Speaker 1: would be the worst thing that could happen to you,
Speaker 1: I'd probably say that mainly because I was such an independent,
Speaker 1: active person. It was more you had to sort of
Speaker 1: come to grips with that this was your life now.
Speaker 1: From straight away, you really felt like you didn't fit.
Speaker 1: You're a young person and you know, just as examples
Speaker 1: like the music you listen to is not the same.
Speaker 1: In the end, I sort of shut off from being
Speaker 1: friends with a lot of them because they're getting older
Speaker 1: in life and sometimes they're here and the next to gone.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like you just felt like you always
Speaker 1: wanted to get out.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me about your room, about your life there.
Speaker 1: Well, I couldn't really open the doors myself because there's
Speaker 1: not an automatic door, and there's a handle on it
Speaker 1: and that, And after a while I sort of felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, I was virtually in a cell because I
Speaker 1: couldn't get out unless I rang buzzer and got let out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I didn't leave the door open, but at night
Speaker 1: it was closed. I couldn't get out if I wanted to. Oh,
Speaker 1: I had a few few times where it wasn't there fault.
Speaker 1: A few people with dementia come into your room and
Speaker 1: you're sort of thinking, well, without that buzzer, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: much helpless here. I can't get out of the bed
Speaker 1: and run away. I can't do it. So it's the
Speaker 1: lack of freedom, the lack of consistency and reliability and care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it wasn't good, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: And it definitely over time wears you down and plays
Speaker 1: on your mental health. It doesn't matter how strong and
Speaker 1: how stubborn you are, it's going to get to you
Speaker 1: sooner or later. And yeah, the longer you stay there
Speaker 1: probably the worst it's going to get.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: So Rick Neil spent four years of his life in
Speaker 2: a nursing home, but he is far from alone, and
Speaker 2: being forced into that position tell me what we know
Speaker 2: about how common this is.
Speaker 4: It used to be a lot more common for a
Speaker 4: young person under the age of sixty five with pretty
Speaker 4: profound disabilities to be stuck living in a nursing home
Speaker 4: or what we call a residential edge care facility, particularly
Speaker 4: since the closure of large scale of disability institutions. Suddenly,
Speaker 4: these big, hulking, awful institutions were closed and there was
Speaker 4: really nowhere left for people with disabilities to live, and
Speaker 4: nursing homes became literally a dumping ground to the point
Speaker 4: where you know, people just gave up trying to find
Speaker 4: a solution to know where these people could live. And
Speaker 4: you know, just a few years ago there are more
Speaker 4: than six thousand people under the age of sixty five
Speaker 4: who had disabilities but who did not have an aging
Speaker 4: related illness or condition, who were in residential edge care.
Speaker 4: They should have had somewhere else to go, but they didn't.
Speaker 4: And pretty much since that peak of around six thousand,
Speaker 4: seven thousand people, we've been trying really hard to get
Speaker 4: them out of there.
Speaker 2: So there's been this push to get young people out
Speaker 2: of nursing homes for years, the Royal Commission into Aged
Speaker 2: Care explicitly called for that. How have governments responded.
Speaker 5: When the Morrison government finally responded to that.
Speaker 4: Age kre Royal Commission report, the Interim report in particular,
Speaker 4: they kind of come up with an implementation plan and
Speaker 4: there were areas of immediate action, and there was kind
Speaker 4: of stage steps where initially they were meant to basically
Speaker 4: get rid of everyone under the age of forty five
Speaker 4: to start off with, and to stop new people entering
Speaker 4: age care if they were under the age of sixty five,
Speaker 4: and then finally make sure that from next year no
Speaker 4: one has lived there that shouldn't be. We have already
Speaker 4: failed the first two of those steps, and the Albanezi
Speaker 4: government has inherited these targets and they're now in government
Speaker 4: and they're about to fail the third and final herd.
Speaker 2: Right, So what is it that's going on here then, riek?
Speaker 2: If there is this consensus among commissioners, ministers, departments that
Speaker 2: this is something that shouldn't happen. Young people just shouldn't
Speaker 2: be in nursing homes, yet it continues. So why is that?
Speaker 4: I mean, partly it's this game of institutional buck shutting.
Speaker 4: So for a long time there wasn't really anywhere else
Speaker 4: to go, and the funding had dried up.
Speaker 5: But then along comes.
Speaker 4: The National disflilt Insurance Scheme. Right and out of everyone,
Speaker 4: people with profound disabilities and long term, round the clock
Speaker 4: physical and mental and intellectual care needs were the people
Speaker 4: who were supposed to have been looked after by the
Speaker 4: National Disflilted Insurance Scheme. And the NDAs just went real slow.
Speaker 4: They dragged their heels and they didn't want to touch
Speaker 4: this issue because they were too busy trying to sort
Speaker 4: out everything else about the scheme. And of course they
Speaker 4: got hauled over the coals by the Edge Care Rooral
Speaker 4: Commission by saying, you know, we've got this semi commitment
Speaker 4: to get people out of nursing homes and you've done
Speaker 4: nothing about it. But it's not just the National disflult
Speaker 4: Insurance Scheme. You've got state and territory governments who themselves
Speaker 4: have played silly buggers, I think with the NDAs in
Speaker 4: the early stages of the scheme, who themselves have responsibility
Speaker 4: for building houses and providing housing. But with the clarion
Speaker 4: call of the Age Care raw Commission. We finally had
Speaker 4: not just bipartisan support for this, but also a pretty
Speaker 4: clear indicator of what needed to happen.
Speaker 5: And the numbers were going down, not nearly as.
Speaker 4: Fast as they should have been, but you know they were.
Speaker 4: You know, the last time I checked, there were about
Speaker 4: fourteen hundred people under the age of sixty five in
Speaker 4: nursing homes across the country as of the end of December.
Speaker 4: But people are still going in and there were forty
Speaker 4: four I think that went into nursing homes in just
Speaker 4: in the last quarter from September to December twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: So the practice hasn't stopped, it hasn't gone away, but
Speaker 4: we were making some progress and that seems to now
Speaker 4: be unraveled.
Speaker 2: Coming up after the break the new law that could
Speaker 2: see even more young people and up in aged care. Rick,
Speaker 2: you've been looking into changes that the federal government is
Speaker 2: planning to the Aged Care Act. Tell me about what
Speaker 2: you've uncovered.
Speaker 4: It has a new eligibility criteria for someone who can
Speaker 4: go into a nursing home or receive home care services
Speaker 4: under the Age Care Act. And the key part of
Speaker 4: this eligibility criteria is that you can have an assessment
Speaker 4: made if you are under the age of sixty five
Speaker 4: but older than the age of fifty, if you are
Speaker 4: homeless or at risk of being homeless. The problem with
Speaker 4: that is that there is no definition in this Act
Speaker 4: about what constitutes homelessness, and people with disabilities who have
Speaker 4: been put into hospital or who do not have.
Speaker 5: The right funded supports for them to live in the.
Speaker 4: Community anymore, those people will be classed as homeless or
Speaker 4: at risk of being homeless. And so we are now
Speaker 4: introducing for the first time ever an explicit clause in
Speaker 4: the federal legislation that Governor's Age Care, which will actually
Speaker 4: codify in legislation pretty much the same thing that happened
Speaker 4: to Neil happening to a bunch of people who are
Speaker 4: aged between fifty and sixty five. If you're a young
Speaker 4: person under the age of fifty, you have to show
Speaker 4: all this evidence that you've tried every single service system
Speaker 4: that they've rejected you. You have to put it in rioting,
Speaker 4: and basically you have to show evidence that there is
Speaker 4: nowhere else for this.
Speaker 5: Person to go.
Speaker 4: But if you're over the age of fifty and under
Speaker 4: the age of sixty five and you're at risk of homelessness.
Speaker 4: Then all you have to show, or all someone who
Speaker 4: wants to get rid of you from their services has
Speaker 4: to show before they can put you in a nursing home,
Speaker 4: is that you've been informed of other options. So essentially,
Speaker 4: and I've been talking to people from the Young People
Speaker 4: in Nursing Home National Alliance, Dr Bronwan Wlcombe in particular,
Speaker 4: who says that this is now legislating bad practice and
Speaker 4: this will actually unwind decades of effort to get people
Speaker 4: out of nursing homes and over the next decade will
Speaker 4: possibly see an uptick in the numbers because exemptions in
Speaker 4: a legislation are fraught, and this is poorly designed, poorly drafted,
Speaker 4: poorly written, and the government doesn't seem to have responded
Speaker 4: to that key criticism.
Speaker 2: And so what is the federal government saying about why
Speaker 2: it's putting this into the legislation?
Speaker 4: To be honest, I didn't really understand their response me
Speaker 4: when I put questions in. They said that, you know,
Speaker 4: this new legislation is an example of how they're taking
Speaker 4: the next step to making sure that young people can't
Speaker 4: be in nursing homes.
Speaker 5: And what they say quite rightly, and I wish they'd.
Speaker 4: Recognize this across the government when it comes to the
Speaker 4: stress of being on below poverty level welfare payments. But
Speaker 4: they say that someone who's homeless or at risk of homelessness,
Speaker 4: who's aged over fifty in particular, they the stress of
Speaker 4: living like that can prematurely age them. And that's the
Speaker 4: reason they say that they're including this particular eligibility exemption
Speaker 4: in the Age Care Act so that these people can
Speaker 4: go into a nursing home they're sleeping rough or they've
Speaker 4: got nowhere else to go. That's great for people who
Speaker 4: are homeless, it's not great for someone who can be
Speaker 4: excused away by the NDIS or state churchury housing departments.
Speaker 2: What does it say to you, Wrick that after multiple
Speaker 2: Royal commissions which have had firsthand testimony presented by people
Speaker 2: like Neil who spoke to how diminished his life was
Speaker 2: by living in this way, how are now in this
Speaker 2: situation where it seems like everything that people who have
Speaker 2: been in nursing homes are saying about their needs is
Speaker 2: being ignored.
Speaker 4: You know, if there wasn't an NDIS, you could find
Speaker 4: yourself having an argument saying, well, maybe there's nowhere else,
Speaker 4: Maybe there is nowhere else.
Speaker 5: It's not good.
Speaker 4: Maybe we should fund somewhere else, but we don't have
Speaker 4: an NDAs. But we do and we have had for
Speaker 4: a decade. And if it can't do this job, what's
Speaker 4: the point of any of it. And I feel like
Speaker 4: this is a cohort of people amongst a cohort of
Speaker 4: people that is really profoundly disabled, people who are already
Speaker 4: part of the broader.
Speaker 5: Disability community, who are often ignored, who.
Speaker 4: Have decisions made about them where very few people are
Speaker 4: taking notice, and the government might think that not enough
Speaker 4: people are going to say anything about it to stop
Speaker 4: them from making a bad decision.
Speaker 2: Rick, thank you for your tam.
Speaker 5: Thanks Ruby, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: After four years in aged care, Neil found a way out.
Speaker 2: He's now living in his own place. He can come
Speaker 2: and go as he wishes and has twenty four hour care.
Speaker 3: Oh I love life now. It's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like I said, it's about as close I
Speaker 1: think is what you can get to living without an injury,
Speaker 1: as far as the choices and the.
Speaker 3: Freedom you have.
Speaker 1: You can go anywhere, you can pretty much do anything
Speaker 1: you can. The it makes sure feel a whole lot better.
Speaker 1: You feel like you've got a purpose now that you know.
Speaker 1: And I've also helped a few advocate groups out as well,
Speaker 1: and I think I've got a little bit to give hopefully.
Speaker 3: But where I am now is pretty good. I want
Speaker 3: to keep it as long as I can, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, leading gambling reform advocate Tim
Speaker 2: Costello says Labor risks an internal rebellion if it waters
Speaker 2: down gambling reforms. A twenty twenty two inquiry into the
Speaker 2: harms of online gambling called for a total ban on
Speaker 2: gambling ads, but reports suggest the Abenezy government is considering
Speaker 2: a partial ban. Mister Costello, who leads the Alliance for
Speaker 2: Gambling Reform, says his spoken with several Labour MPs who
Speaker 2: are pressuring the government to deliver on the inquiry's recommendations.
Speaker 2: And the UN says Israel has forcibly evacuated roughly seventy
Speaker 2: five thousand Palestinians from carn Unie as it again expands
Speaker 2: operations into the region. The news comes as Hamas is
Speaker 2: calling on Katari, Egyptian and US mediators to implement a
Speaker 2: cease fire plan that was put forward by US President
Speaker 2: Joe Biden. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.