EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
Issued by the authority of the Minister for Ageing
Aged Care Act 1997
Aged Care (Residential care subsidy – amount of accommodation supplement) Determination 2008 (No. 3)
The Aged Care Act 1997 (the Act) provides for the funding of aged care services. Persons who are approved under the Act to provide residential aged care services (approved providers) can be eligible to receive residential care subsidy payments in respect of the care they provide to approved care recipients.
Subsection 44-5A(3) of the Act provides that the accommodation supplement for a particular day is the amount determined by the Minister by legislative instrument or worked out in accordance with a method determined by the Minister by legislative instrument.
The accommodation supplement is payable in respect of supported residents receiving care in eligible services (for example services that are certified and are not providing care to the resident on an extra service basis).
In summary, supported residents are those who are being provided with residential care through a residential care service, who entered care on or after 20 March 2008 and whose assets are below a certain maximum asset threshold or in respect of whom the Secretary has made a financial hardship determination.
This Determination sets out a method for working out the amount of the accommodation supplement.
This Determination revokes the previously made Determination. The key difference between this Determination and the previous Determination is that this Determination allows the correct supplement to be calculated in cases where a person is suffering financial hardship and the Secretary has made a determination that the person not pay an accommodation bond or charge or pay only a maximum amount of accommodation bond or charge. The changes to the Determination are consequential to changes made to the Act through the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Act 2008.
The effect of the changes to the Act and to the Determination is that:
- for a supported resident for whom a financial hardship determination has been made under section 57-14(1)(a) or 57A-9(1)(a) that the person must not be charged a bond or charge, the relevant full accommodation supplement will be paid by the Commonwealth (taking into account the approved provider’s compliance with certification requirements and relevant ratios); and
- for a supported resident for whom a financial hardship determination has been made under section 57-14(1)(b) or 57A-9(1)(b) that the person must be charged no more than a specified maximum amount of bond or charge, a lower amount of supplement may be payable based on the maximum amount of bond or charge that the Secretary determined could be paid by the resident.
The changes to the Determination ensure that the correct amount of supplement is payable in respect of these residents.
This Determination is a legislative instrument for the purposes of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003.
Consultation
The policies reflected in the changes to the Act and this Determination were the subject of consultation with the aged care sector through the Ageing Consultative Committee, which comprises peak industry, professional and consumer bodies. Sector feedback was considered in the development and fine tuning of the complex legislative and policy reform process