Approval of Care Recipients Amendment Principles 2008 (No. 2)

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

Issued by the authority of the Minister for Ageing

Aged Care Act 1997

Approval of Care Recipients Amendment Principles 2008 (No. 2)

The Aged Care Act 1997 (the Act) provides for funding of aged care services.  Persons who are approved under the Act to provide aged care services (approved providers) can be eligible to receive subsidy payments in respect of the care they provide to approved care recipients. 

Subsection 96-1(1) of the Act allows the Minister to make Principles providing for various matters required or permitted by a Part or section of the Act.  One set of Principles made under the Act is the Approval of Care Recipients Principles 1997 (the Approval of Care Recipients Principles).

The purpose of the Approval of Care Recipients Amendment Principles 2008 (No. 2) (the Amending Principles) is detailed below.  The Amending Principles are a legislative instrument for the purposes of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003.

Approval of Care Recipients Amendment Principles 2008 (No. 2)

The Amending Principles make three changes in respect of assessments by Aged Care Assessment Team (ACATs), as follows:

• to ensure that people eligible for extended aged care at home (EACH) and extended aged care at home - dementia (EACHD) can also receive a lower level of care in the community (consistent with the arrangements in residential care under which a person approved as a recipient of a high level of residential care may receive residential care at any classification level);

• to ensure that approvals for EACH and EACHD are non-lapsing.  This is consistent with the changes made to the Aged Care Act 1997 through the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Act 2008.  These Act amendments provide that a person’s approval as a recipient of care does not lapse if the care in respect of which he or she is approved is (relevantly) for residential care that is not limited to a low level of residential care; and

• to make consequential changes to existing provisions to align the Principles with the changes to the Act relating to non-lapsing of certain types of approvals.

Consultation

The policies reflected in the Amending Principles 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.

Regulation Impact Statement

The Office of Best Practice Regulation has advised that no Regulation Impact Statement is required (OBPR ID 9978).

Details of the amendments to the Approval of Care Recipients Principles are listed at Attachment A.

ATTACHMENT A

NOTES ON CLAUSES

Clause 1 states that the name of the Amending Principles is the Approval of Care Recipients Amendment Principles 2008 (No. 2).

Clause 2 states that the Amending Principles commence on the commencement of the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Act 2008.

Clause 3 states that Schedule 1 amends the Approval of Care Recipients Principles.

Schedule 1 Amendments

Items 1 to 4

These items achieves the policy intent of ensuring that if a person is:

• approved as a recipient of flexible care in the form of EACHD, the limitation of the approval does not prevent the person from receiving EACH or community care; or
• approved as a recipient of flexible care in the form of EACH, the limitation of the approval does not prevent the person receiving community care.

The items achieve this by:

• including a note at the end of subsection 5.6(1) (which relates to eligibly for community care) that draws readers attention to the fact that a person eligible for EACH or EACHD will also be eligible for community care (as achieved by the amendments described in items 2 and 3);

• inserting a new subsection 5.7(1A) that provides that a person who is eligible to receive flexible care in the form of EACH is also eligible for community care (item 2);

• inserting a new subsection 5.7AA(1A) that provides that a person who is eligible to receive flexible care in the form of EACHD is also eligible for EACH and community care (item 3);

• replacing subsection 5.9(3) (which relates to matters and circumstances to which approval of a person as a care recipient may be limited) with three new subsections (item 4) that provide that:

• approval of a person as a recipient of residential care may be limited to respite care if respite care is appropriate to the needs of the person, the person’s carer or both;  
• if a person is approved as a recipient of EACHD, the limitation of the approval does not prevent the person from receiving EACH or community care; and
• if a person is approved as a recipient of EACH, the limitation of the approval does not prevent the person from receiving community care.

Item 5

Item 70 of the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Act 2008 amended section 23-3 of the Aged Care Act 1997 to provide that a person’s approval as a recipient of care does not lapse if:

• the care in respect of which he or she is approved is limited to residential care provided as respite care; or

• if the approval is for residential care other than residential care provided as respite care — the care in respect of which he or she is approved is not limited to a low level of residential care; or

• if the care in respect of which he or she is approved is flexible care — the care is specified in the Flexible Care Subsidy Principles.

For the purposes of 23-3(1A)(c), this item (item 5) amends the Principles to specify two kinds of flexible care in respect of which an approval does not lapse — EACH and EACHD. 

Item 6

This item makes consequential changes to section 5.14 of the Principles so that it only applies to approvals for types of care that continue to be lapsing and not to those that are no longer lapsing as the result of the inclusion of subsection 23-3(1A) in the Aged Care Act 1997. 

Section 5.14 is amended to remove the references to respite care provided as residential care (because respite care is now non-lapsing in accordance with new section 23-3(1A)(a)) and change the references to residential care so that they are references to low level residential care only, noting that approvals for high level residential care are non-lapsing in accordance with new paragraph 23-3(1A)(b) of the Aged Care Act 1997.