A New Era in Ageing for Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers

On 1 April, Wattle Place, in partnership with the National Aged and Community Care Roundtable for Forgotten Australians, hosted a forum titled, A New Era in Ageing for Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers, sponsored by the Australian Department of Health and Ageing, among others.

Forum’s focussing on ageing and Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers, are held annually as part of International Care Experienced History Month. This was the first time being held in NSW.

The reason for these forums is to spread awareness about the significant challenges faced by Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers in accessing and using aged care services, to advocate for improvements that make aged care suitable for them, and to come together to work on solutions.

It could be said that the main barrier to the ability of aged care services to provide suitable services to Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers is the lack of awareness and understanding of who Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers are, not just in the aged care sector, but in Australia generally.

Who are Forgotten Australians/Care Leavers?

Forgotten Australians are adults who, as children, were placed in children’s homes, orphanages or other child welfare institutions, or foster homes, in Australia before 1990. Forgotten Australians were the subject of an Apology by the Federal Government in 2009, following a Senate Inquiry in 2004, into the widespread and severe mistreatment children experienced throughout the Out-of-Home Care system. Unfortunately the children in these environments experienced physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

Not everyone in this group identifies with the term “Forgotten Australian”. Other terms may include “Care Leaver”, State Ward, Homie, they may identify with the home they were placed in, for example “Parra Girls”, or they may not link their identify with that time in their lives. “Forgotten Australians” was the name used in the 2004 Report of the Senate Inquiry, Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children and the name given to the NSW-funded Forgotten Australian Support Service offered at Wattle Place. Some people prefer this name as it represents their hard-won recognition and they see it as an accurate description. Others don’t like the negative focus of the name. “Care Leavers” can be used describe anyone who spent time in out-of-home care, including those after 1990. However, it is the term used in the Aged Care Act, old and new, to identify this group. Through the rest of this blog, the two terms will be used interchangeably.

Why does the aged care sector need to learn about and understand Forgotten Australians?

As mentioned, Care Leavers are recognised as one of the groups having special needs within the previous and new Aged Care Acts.

This is significant because it recognises that their traumatic experiences in childhood will have severe implications on their experience with aged care.

These implications include:

• Terror at the idea of being re-institutionalised. Re-living life as it was in their childhood institutions, such as lack of freedom to come and go, strict schedules, unappetising mass-produced food, lack of privacy, lack of autonomy, loss of personal possessions, vulnerability and risk of abuse, is too traumatising for most to even consider.

Even if they are receiving care in their own homes, they may face:

• Vulnerability and dependence on others/having strangers in their home – triggering fear of abuse, based on past experience of those who were meant to care for them, abusing them.
• Others having to shower, toilet or dress them – triggering past trauma from sexual abuse
• Loss of independence and control over their own lives – triggering past trauma from helplessness

Many of the institutions in which they were placed as children were religious organisations, and, as has been disclosed in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, many of the sexual offenders against the children were religious representatives. A number of those religious organisations now run aged care services, with some old chidren’s homes being turned into aged care facilities. It is important to recognise that religious symbols, rituals or celebrations may also be very traumatising triggers for some Care Leavers.

Other triggers such as smells, songs, certain foods will be very individual and impossible to predict or avoid.

What can be done to ensure Forgotten Australians receive the safe and appropriate aged care services that they, as all of us, are entitled to?

The responses from Care Leavers at the 1 April forum were clear.

• Forgotten Australians want all aged care providers to know who they are.
• They want to be treated with dignity and respect by aged care providers.
• Aged care providers need to be trauma-informed and earn the trust of Forgotten Australians.

These are very reasonable expectations, and in one respect, very basic, minimal expectations.

However, in practical terms, these are not so straightforward.

The aged care sector is drastically over-burdened, under-resourced and undergoing massive reforms. The management and priorities in the past have meant that the sector is now having to make up for significant inadequacies in care provision – the care for Care Leavers being one of many of those inadequacies.

Our expectation and hope is that, with the focus on individual care and human rights for older people in the new Aged Care Act, if aged care providers focus more attention on improving their services for older Australians in each of the special needs groups, including Care Leavers, care for ALL older Australians will automatically fall in line with the expectations under the Act.

In the meantime, we are seeing small steps of progress and we will continue to listen, collaborate, educate and advocate for improved aged care for Forgotten Australians. We can’t change what happened to them in the early years of their lives, but we can ensure that they are well looked after and feel safe in the later years of their lives. Australia, as a nation, owes them at least that.