The Council on the Ageing (COTA) is a not-for-profit organisation whose core mission is to stand up for the rights, interests and futures of older Australians.
So why is it investing in an aged care app that some experts say should be banned because it puts older people at risk?
COTA is a relatively small investor in Mable, an Uber-like tech company that boasts it is disrupting the aged care sector by linking carers directly with clients.
With just a 0.5% shareholding, COTA trails behind some of the company’s big-name investors, including Ellerston Capital — the hedge fund set up by the Packer family.
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But the group still stands to make money from the company, which in April was awarded a $5.8 million contract by the federal government to provide a “surge workforce” in nursing homes affected by COVID-19.
Aged care experts say this is problematic, because it restricts the advocacy group’s ability to hold industry to account — particularly at a time when the aged care sector is in crisis.
“The relationship with Mable potentially damages COTA’s ability to advocate more strongly,” says Joseph Ibrahim, head of the Health Law and Ageing Research Unit at Monash University. “It goes to a question of integrity.”
Mable was founded by investment bankers Peter Scutt and Tony Charara in 2014. Last month, the royal commission into aged care heard submissions from experts who believe Mable’s business model — which is more like a brokerage firm — could put older Australians at risk because it operated outside the rules governing the aged care sector.
Paul Versteege, a policy manager at Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association (CPSA), said the company should be banned from delivering home care because there were not enough safeguards in place to protect consumers and workers.
Scutt rejected that claim. “I don’t believe that we’re operating outside the aged care regulatory framework,” he said.
COTA’s chairman Ian Yates also rejected the suggestion that it was inappropriate for the advocacy group to own shares in the company.
“We believe this kind of platform, which then did not exist, is something many consumers want,” he told Crikey. He said COTA agreed to accept the shareholding in lieu of fees for consulting work it did for Mable when the platform was being set up.
“This is a passive investment from which we currently derive no income, and as you would be aware Mable shares are not traded,” he said.
Yates said there was “no evidence” that Mable has resulted in any negative outcomes for older Australians. “Some critics talk about the risks but noting that Mable has many tens of thousands of users we have not seen evidence of negative outcomes.”
He also rejected the suggestion that it compromised the integrity of the advocacy group. “COTA is not taking sides with the industry,” he said. “We work with the industry where it suits consumers’ interests. We criticise the industry constantly and sometimes effectively argue for government action about many industry practices.”
Yates sits on a number of federal government and aged care sector boards, including the federal government’s Aged Care Financing Authority; the Aged Care Sector Committee and the Aged Care Quality Advisory Council.
The COTA board also includes former health department secretary and Crown director Jane Halton, who is also a member of the government’s National COVID-19 Commission advisory board.
Ibrahim said transparency and accountability needs to be at the centre of advocacy groups when it comes to standing up for the millions of older Australians, many of whom were being cared for by private aged care companies.
This was even more critical as the pandemic exposed widespread deficiencies in the sector.
“If we’re going to clean up aged care, we need to be frank and fearless, and how can you be frank and fearless if you’re not truly independent?” he said.
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To be an eligible provider for government funding there is significant checks and balances that add cost to providing the service.
A level 4 package[$50000] that means the elder is requiring 24 hour care typically has a 30% cost taken out for beaurocrcy ,ticking the boxes that provide the checks and balances that federal funding requires. And that is a good provider.
It’s more like 15% for lower packages .
So 17 odd thousand dollars goes toward that cost which means you will run out of funding in 3 to 4 months instead of in 5 to 6 months
We have people in aged care facilities that are not able to advocate for themselves and may well be wondering why they still exist in this dimension, the sum total of theyr’e interaction with others for instance is to be fed , changed and washed each day for years.
Departing from this mortal coil is rightly something we take very seriously, for others to make this decision manslaughter/murder seriously.
It’s a big grown ups conversation that must always boils down to the individual , and changing your mind is also highly individual ,up to a very final point.
The fact is hospitals/doctors make these decisions and very often to protect themselves from financial recourse by relatives or loved ones.
I’ve seen my mother slowly die of dehydration for a week because the hospital had not been able to fund proper nursing staff to avoid oxygen deprivation to the brain.
I don’t blame the understaffed underfunded ward/ trainee nurse or the hospital.
Funding for aged care , caring for our elders is a massively expensive [in economic terms] undertaking that this government and plenty of others in the past and future want to avoid.
It is also massively expensive and demanding for any of us to stay home and care for our elders, socially,financially and yet psychologically rewarding.
It completes the circle and repays the emotional/financial indebtedness.
Making everything about the money has its limits and economic rationalism/Neoliberalism draws an impolite blank when faced with this reality of life, being imminent death.
Happy pills[pure cocaine] 3D films and pictures that evoke memories and happy blissfull times, and/or meeting everyone still alive you would like to, dancing all night for days if you like, then a strong sleeping pill[heroin] would cost this Neoliberal culture far, far less and be so much less cruel than our current scenario for many of our elders.[agent green?]
Ultimately the elder must have that choice and be able to change their minds as many times as they chose.
Free funding for 10000 psychologists trained specifically for geriatrics is the cheapest and simplest way ahead of this tragic indictment of our current crop of thinkers, advisors and public servants namely this government.
Aged Care is a cherry-picking Christmas all year round for those of a certain mind-set.
Others who give of their all whilst never to be recognised as an ‘Australian of the Year’ know . . they are all that stand between their client’s smile and an anonymous wait . . before deliverance. Neither Federal Govt or COTA respective oversight of Aged Care prevented decades of abuse. Nor either one or other voice has achieved the accountable environmental restructure essential for both aged and carer needs?