ACCUSATIONS OF "gobbledegook" and groans of disbelief greeted Whanganui District Health Board and AccessAbility speakers at a public meeting to discuss aged care yesterday.
However, AccessAbility chief executive Judy Bilderbeck's eventual suggestion to take another look at home help criteria for elderly and offer to reassess some elderly for rest-home care, placated rest-home operators and elderly who attended.
The meeting was called by Whanganui MP Chester Borrows, who invited representatives of the WDHB and needs assessment co-ordinator AccessAbility to front up to the community's concerns, after a meeting on October 30 overflowed with concerns about too-tough needs assessments criteria and the effect of home help cuts.
National elder care spokesperson Jo Goodhew said she was especially concerned by claims at that meeting that the situation for Wanganui elderly was more serious and that people didn't know where to go for help.
Although the WDHB defended itself as having the highest per capita funding of elderly amongst DHBs, Wanganui resident Warwick Bullen dismissed that kind of talk, asking instead why elderly people, who had agreed with family members and GPs that it was time go into a rest-home, had to "climb over hurdles" to be assessed.
"Stop with the gobbledegook we've been hearing here and let's have some action," he said.
AccessAbility chief executive Judy Bilderbeck said that the elderly could be coerced by relatives or GPs to say they wanted to go into a home, drawing disbelief from some operators who said that was rare.
Assessments were about need and giving elderly choice, she said.
Springvale Manor general manager Joyce Rodriguez said the needs assessment process in Wanganui was like banging her head against a "brick wall of bureaucracy" and the assessors didn't listen.
Brian Hammond, 86, had undergone seven needs assessments but was deemed too mentally alert to go into a home, despite his physical frailty. He was now in hospital.
Ms Bilderbeck offered to reassess some elderly for rest-home care as a way to move forward.
Maureen Beard, who managed independent living rest-home Quinlan Court, said cutting home help had made life difficult for residents, many of whom found it hard to do tasks like vacuuming or cleaning the toilet.
"You keep saying 'keep people in their own homes', but you are not giving them the aids to keep them there," she said.
WDHB elder care senior portfolio manager Andrea Bunn said compared with other DHBs, more people in Whanganui received home help before funding was reprioritised into areas of higher need.
"The group of people who lost their home care were identified as low need ... it was a really difficult decision for the DHB to make."
AccessAbility manager Wendy Kopura said "low need" meant someone who only required help with housework.
"While the DHB is not able to fund it, that doesn't mean people have to do it themselves," she said.
When asked by Mr Borrows who would fund it, she could not say.
"That's the difficulty," Ms Kopura said.
Ms Bilderbeck said it might be possible to look at the low-need criteria again to see if housework had a long term impact on health, but any change would have to be renegotiated with the WDHB.
After the meeting, Mr Borrows said the Whanganui region had a high number of high need people existing just on their pension, who had few savings due to lifelong low wages, which meant many could not afford to pay for home help.
Some people's conditions had deteriorated after they lost their subsidised housework, he said.
WDHB was the only DHB he knew of that had cut it straight out when criteria were changed.
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