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Assessment Tools For Aged Care

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Title: Assessment Tools for Aged Care in Australia

Background:
• Australians over 65 are referred to as older people and make up the “aged” population.
• The aged care sector operates under the Aged Care Act 1997 and Aged Care (Transitional Provisions) Act 1997 that came into effect in July 2014.
• As part of National Health reform in 2011, the Council of Australian Governments agreed to transfer all funding and operational responsibility of aged care support services for people over 65 years to the Commonwealth Government. (COTA, 2014).
• Public expenditure on aged care was $12.5 billion in 2011, increasing to $13.3 billion in 2012-2013. Additionally, subsidized informal care expenditure was an estimated $1.8 billion (Department of Social Services, 2013).
• Taxpayer funding makes up 93% of aged care expenditure (ARC Centre for Excellent in Population Ageing Research, 2014).
• The number of older Australians is expected to grow more than 4 times in the next 40 years to a estimated 1.8 million people by 2050 (The Australian Government Treasury, 2010). As a result, expenditure for aged care is projected to increase by 1% of the total GDP by 2050 (National Seniors Australia, 2010).
Figure 1. Aged Care Expenditure as Percentage GDP (National Seniors Australia, 2010)

• Major components contributing to this increasing expenditure trend are increases in income support for seniors, residential and flexible care, home support, ageing and service improvement and allowances for

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