To the Honourable President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled

The petition of the undersigned shows:

• that we are very concerned about how our mums, dads, partners and family members living in nursing homes will continue to receive physiotherapy and allied health services after October 2022.
• that we are afraid that under the new aged care funding model (the AN-ACC),  nursing home residents will miss out on physiotherapy and allied health services, which are vital for their care, or the family’s will have to pay for this themselves.
• that we are worried about the effect that a lack of allied health in nursing homes will have on the entire health system. Nursing home residents without allied health fall more, have more pressure injuries, pain (and therefore pain medication and associated side effects). This leads to more preventable hospital admissions, which causes more stress and cost to the resident, families, nurses and nursing homes and our hospital system, as well as taxpayers.

Your petitioners ask that the Senate:

• ensures that nursing home residents receive physiotherapy and allied health services to help them manage their pain, prevent falls, continue to be mobile, and maintain or improve their quality of life. This need for allied health services for the aged is well established by community feedback, professional and medical associations, and research including by government and the authors of the new funding model (AN-ACC), as well the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.
• rectifies the finding of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety’s Final Report: Care, Dignity and Respect (1st March 2021), which states that “allied health care in residential aged care is also insufficient and we are concerned that the type of service provided may be influenced by funding arrangements” (p. 66). We are calling for separate, dedicated funding for physiotherapy and other allied health professionals in nursing home facilities. We are calling for enough dedicated funding to ensure that each nursing home resident receives at least 20 minutes per resident per day of physiotherapy and allied health services after October 2022.
• ensures that these 20 minutes per day of physiotherapy and allied health need to be tailored to what the nursing home resident (or their advocate), the nursing home, the allied health professional, and their doctor feel is beneficial.
• ensures that physiotherapists and other allied health professionals can then provide exercise, pressure care, falls prevention skills, or whatever the client needs in the allotted time.
• ensures that the 20 minutes of individualised allied health professional treatments are provided only by university-qualified and AHPRA registered physiotherapists, occupational therapists, exercise physiologists, dietitians, speech pathologists, social workers, osteopaths, chiropractors, podiatrists, and psychologists. We further request that the allied health professional’s treatments be an individualised session rather than a group session, and not be provided by other therapists such as lifestyle coordinators, music therapists, and therapy assistants. The 20 minutes should not come out of already mandated nursing care minutes.

Thank you.

Petition authorised by Alwyn Blayse Cooroy QLD.

Principal Physiotherapist and CEO of Blue Ribbon Allied Health Pty Ltd trading as AAC – Allied Aged Care and Blue Ribbon Physiotherapy Pty Ltd trading as Death of Allied Health campaign. 

Contact details Phone 5391 3885 

Registered Address Level 3/826 Ann Street Fortitude Valley 4006

Web – https://www.alliedagedcare.com.au/doac/

E – info@alliedagedcare.com.au

IF YOU ARE HAPPY JUST TO SUPPLY YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE, SO WE CAN LODGE YOUR SIGNED CHANGE.ORG PETITION, YOU CAN SKIP THIS SECTION. The following information is for you to understand why we are asking for your personal details and how we keep your information safe.

Thank you SO much for signing our Change.org petition! If you’ve come across this page and haven’t already signed, you can still sign by clicking on the following link, but you’ll need to be quick! https://www.change.org/p/the-australian-senate-senate-petition-to-ensure-physiotherapy-and-allied-health-for-nursing-home-residents

THIS page is for those who have signed the Change.org petition at the previous link to supply their email address. This is voluntary – you do not have to provide your email address. However, after calling the Senate Petitions officer on the 8^th March about lodgement of the petition, I discovered that we do need to supply your email address for your signed Change.org petition to be accepted at the Senate.

If you would like to confirm this information, the person to contact is Lyz Stanton, Table office, Department of the Senate. She can be contacted by phone on 02 6277 3039. When I spoke to Lyz, she was unable to find the requirement in writing, but she has since advised that it is displayed at the following link which advises how to petition the Senate: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Petitions/Senate_Petitions/petitions

Unfortunately, this information was not available when we first set up the petition, so please accept my personal apologies that we were unaware of this requirement.

Fortunately, your voice CAN still be heard at the Senate, and help us to save physio and allied health! All you need to do is fill the form in below with your email address. We will NEVER share your email address or market to you, and we will delete it once the campaign, which I am hopeful we will win, is finished.  As a company director and registered physiotherapist, I am responsible for making sure that your data is kept safe. We will follow all privacy requirements (legal and best practice). Our privacy policy and how we store information is at the following link: http://www.alliedagedcare.com.au/terms-privacy/

So please act NOW and supply us your email so we can have your signature at Change.org accepted by the senate. We are running out of time because the Senate sits on 28th and 29th of March for the final sitting before election. We need to get this issue back on the Senate’s radar before the election. If you don’t want to supply your email address below that’s OK too. Your Change.org signature is still very helpful, and we will include it as part of our updates to politicians, media and government.

Thank you so much for your help making sure our mums, dads, partners and grandparents get the vital physio and allied health they need.

Together we can and WILL stop the #deathofalliedhealth  !