SDA Homes

Speaking to Young People in Aged Care is Heartbreaking

Having spent much of yesterday speaking to various people living in aged care, it is really hard to work out what is worse, the ones who are dying, or the ones who have given up and are just waiting to.

Speaking to a lovely lady in her 40s who had a stroke and has spent many years in aged care.  It was so clear that she is not complaining, she has accepted that she is going to die there.  She tried hard to find somewhere, anywhere, but she was deemed to be in a safe place.

She has SDA in her plan now but her stroke makes it hard for her to find information.  Her parents have passed on and other friends and family have drifted away as the reality of visiting her in a such a depressing environment became too much.

It’s also clear that there is just a little spark left inside her giving a hint of the vibrant happy lady she used to be.  The system has beaten that vibrancy out of her.  I could have cried talking to her just seeing what it has done to her and how she has just accepted that this is her lot on life.  But me getting upset would have made her feel bad for upsetting me.

She wasn’t really aware that she could have an independent support coordinator look after and help her find somewhere.  The NDIA knows her situation is bad, but she is in a safe place with the right equipment etc so unfortunately there are people in more urgent need to take up the miniscule amount of SDA property coming on line.  She is very scared of finding a possible place to only be told it’s already full.  You can see she only has a limited amount of hope left and she can’t risk haven’t it crushed.

Imagine if Your Roommate/ Neighbours Die Every Few Weeks or Months

Young people with high care needs are in the high needs section in aged care.  Who have the highest care needs there, those in the last few weeks of their lives.

Imagine getting to know the person next to you and then they die.  And repeating that over and over again.  You’d stop getting close just to protect yourself from the hurt. So then you just shut yourself of from those around you.

Aged Care is Number One Exit from Hospital

Young people are often placed in aged care to get them out of hospital. We know that some young people spend a year longer in hospital than they needed to just because they have no where to go.  To then have to go into an aged care facility is just disgusting.  It has to stop. But the numbers are so enormous that the scale of building required makes the SDA rollout the largest social housing program ever.

Not Pity or Admiration. Just a Solution

The young people we meet in aged care don’t want pity or you to think they brave or any emotional stuff.  They just want a solution. They want to be able to live somewhere and have the support to live life like everyone else.

The government has finally put in place a solution but the numbers are so huge it’s Mind boggling.

7500 Admitted to Aged Care During Current SDA Push

While the government is pushing to have as many people build SDA property as possible by June 2022,  7500 new young people will be admitted to aged care alone.

NDISP has over $17m of property starting development this month. That’s just over 40 people housed. None of those 40 tenants  are coming from aged care or at risk if going  into it. We have nearly $200m due to start this financial year and that will get over 500 people into awesome places.  We are aiming to at least double that in each of the following 2 years. And it’s just not enough. That’s $1b of development for 2500 people  and there were at least 28,000  people who needed a place to live at 1 July this year and another 7,500 will be admitted into aged care alone. That’s without all the hidden people we’ve talked about previously.

Every Single Week We Meet More People Than We Can Help

Jon, myself and the rest of the team meet people everywhere who need help. More people than we can help.  It’s heartbreaking that we have the solution and our capacity to help is growing all the time, but it needs more, we need your help.

So if you see us looking tired or you wondering why we are a bit hard to catch ( thank you to our lovely long suffering families for understanding), it’s because we are trying to help as many people as we can and every single place might not make a difference to the overall numbers, but it makes  a massive difference to that person.

Help While Getting Great Returns on Investment

The government was really smart in the way they put the SDA system together.  They knew there was no way the government or not for profits could deliver what was needed.  So they put together a pricing regime that makes this such an attractive investment that it would stimulate lots of development.

Unfortunately the government also made the compliance and regulatory component so incredibly complex that it is just not possible to be an SDA provider in any small or medium scale.

That’s where NDISP comes in.  We do all the hard work and compliance and do so at the lowest prices we can.  Because although we need this to be a profitable business and to be profitable for investors, we need that profitability to be able to get as many people out of terrible places as possible.  It is an absolute mission.

While the returns are amazing and far superior to any other property investment, they are lower than they could be.  We maximise our inclusions in the builds and we provide extra support to participants.  That is a completely non negotiable part of working with us.  But if you’d love great returns, all the hard work taken care of and knowing your investment changes  several people’s lives, we would love you to join us on our mission.

A Couple of Videos on Real People

Why6000  young people live in aged care.  SBS.

Specialist Disability Accommodation is governed by legislation.  One of the key parts of legislation is the

National Disability Insurance Scheme (Specialist Disability Accommodation) Rules 2016

One of the key parts of the rules is part 6, Division 1 – The General Requirements for SDA to be funded.  One of the oft missed part of these rules is that if the disabled person is a member of a couple, 1 bedroom places are ineligible to be funded without a 2nd bedroom or similiar sized room.  Here is 6.1(d)  quoted directly from the rules:

at least one private bedroom has been made available for the participant or, if the participant is a member of a couple, at least one private bedroom and a second room that may be a bedroom or another similar sized private room has been made available to the couple;

Now if I was to put my lawyers hat on, where not defined in the legislation, the common definition of word is what is used by courts to interpret what it means.  The key phrase here is,  “a member of a couple”, not lives with, cohabitants with, is married, in a defacto relationship etc but merely a “member” of a couple.

So  on the plain reading of the rules, if a person with disability is single and moves into a one bedroom apartment, but then starts dating to a point where they (or a reasonable person) would consider them to be a couple then they breach one of the general requirements of the SDA rules for SDA property to be funded.  A government agency can’t just ignore the legislation.

We are not out to cause panic to anyone with a disability living in a one bedroom apartment, these rules are what they are.  Indeed, we would rather that this provision was amended or removed from the rules.