GLORIA GE AND STEPHANIE SCHLEIMER |
The recently announced Australian Government 2024–25 Budget includes $2.2 billion reserved to improve safe, quality aged care. The budget is dedicated to address some fundamental issues in the current aged care system, such as reducing wait times for older adults seeking Home Care Packages and bolstering the aged care workforce. The Budget also aims to upgrade technology systems and digital infrastructure across the aged care sector (more about the fact sheet related to aged care in the 2024-225 budget, please read Budget 2024-2025: Quality Aged Care).
The Australian Government is developing a new Aged Care Act to strengthen Australia’s aged care system. The new rights-based Act will put older people at the centre of aged care to ensure that people who access related services funded by the Australian Government are treated with respect and have the quality of life they deserve. In preparing the new Aged Care Act, the Australian Government has recognised that more older adults prefer to live in their own homes, rather than moving to residential aged care. However, according to the 2021 Royal Commission report, older adults often wait too long to receive access to care at home under the current aged care system (Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (RCACQS) 2021). This is even worse for older adults from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds who want to remain living at home as they are not able to receive culturally safe care in residential aged care. The Royal Commission’s findings suggest that technology should be an important part of the solution to this growing nationwide problem.
Griffith University researchers, Associate Professor Gloria Ge and Professor Stephanie Schleimer, conducted a study examining the benefits of aged care providers adding affordable robotic technology to their services packages to enhance the well-being of older adults from CALD backgrounds who choose to live at home. Their study (Ge and Schleimer, 2023), adopting a transformative service research lens, was performed with a group of older Australian adults from CALD backgrounds with an average age of 70 years. The findings reveal that older adults from CALD backgrounds are open to learning about new technologies and can successfully interact independently with multiple robotic technologies in their own homes. The results indicate that robotic technology has the potential to increase the well-being of older people by enhancing a sense of belonging, independence and quality of life while living at home. Their study shows a promising future involving the use of available technology to assist older people to live better lives at home. Ageing at home can be central to a person’s overall well-being and this study is a big step towards a new aged care system desperately needed in a society with a rapidly ageing population.
Associate Professor Gloria Ge is Deputy Director of the Griffith Asia Institute and Professor Stephanie Schleimer is the MBA Director, Griffith Business School.
Ge, G. L. and Schleimer, S.C. (2023), “Robotics technologies and well-being for older adults living at home”, Journal of Services Marketing, 37 (3): 340-350. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-03-2022-0076
Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (RCACQS) (2021), Final report, available at: https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report
Further readings: aged care reform priorities
