One of our reactions to the news that a Royal Commission into our aged care sector is to be set up is that in all probability it was/is far more urgent that a Royal Commissions into the government’s own regulation of our aged sector be set up. We have Ms Rae Lamb working as the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner with her 150 complaints officers don’t we? Haven’t these 150 or more people been doing a very good job?
Our guess is that they’ve been doing a hopeless job – perhaps almost as hopeless as the job Sue Dawson and all of her people have been doing at the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission!
Of course we’re always offering things like that if any of our readers have had experiences of the Commonwealth’s Aged Care Complaints Commission, (or NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, for that matter,) doing a good job we’d be more than happy to publicise the details on this blog.
To us the miracle of the internet, (and it IS a miracle! – every day it seems to us to be more of a miracle,) has changed everything, made it a quite different world.
To us all we have to do is send out emails to the aged care facilities and people most likely to provide what we need, using their ordinary email addresses, (if they haven’t got one, don’t bother with them,) and it’s very likely that the one or ones who provide the best responses will be the ones most likely to be the best ones to deal with. And if things don’t go so well it’s so easy to let others know how you got on.
One thing is for sure – if you don’t do this and you end up being involved with a bad guy, it’s incredibly unlikely that any governments will help you, either through things like the Aged Care Complaints Commission or otherwise, either before or after any Royal Commissions.
We have applied this approach in other fields and will apply it to the area of aged care as we do more work on it.
