Click here to download the Background Paper.

Published April 2020

The purpose of this paper is to articulate the perspective of the NAGATSIAC on how the aged care system redesign, currently underway by the Commonwealth Government, can incorporate mechanisms and policies that would:

• improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians’ access to appropriate aged
  care services
• provide safeguards within the aged care system that protect this group from the
  common experience of ‘falling through the cracks’ in terms of service provision meeting
  levels of need.

This paper will consider underrepresentation and contributing factors for the following three
areas of the aged care system, as well as some likely roadblocks in system redesign:

• access pathways
• in-home packages
• residential aged care

The NAGATSIAC submission to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety
(September 2019) can be considered as supplementary reading to this strategy paper, as it offers
extensive explanations of Indigenous Australians’ problematic experiences of the current aged
care system.