The Minister for Aged Care will today announce $649 million in additional funding to create more than 9,000 new residential care places across the nation, The Australian newspaper has reported.
The majority of the 9911 new places will be in Queensland (2680), Victoria (2645), NSW (2470) and Western Australia (1623).
The funding, which will go towards developing new services and expanding current facilities, follows increased media attention on aged care standards by the major national news services News Limited, Fairfax and the ABC since the start of this year.
It is unclear yet whether the funding will be made available to all providers or only state-run services, where the discrepancies between standards, processes and accountability have been the most shocking.
As the fallout of the abuse revelations at Oakden continues, Nous Group has been to conduct an internal review of the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency which will be separate to the inquiry into federal regulatory processes announced by Minister Wyatt last month.
South Australia’s Independent Commissioner Against Corruption yesterday confirmed it would investigate the Oakden scandal, using the same powers as a royal commission.
