Speech to launch the ECCV’s Multicultural Aged Care Strategy

September 6, 2006, Carlton, Victoria.

Address by Peter van Vliet, Executive Officer

The ECCV is extremely proud to present our proposal for a Multicultural Aged Care Strategy to Victoria’s political parties in the lead up to our State Election.

In my view presently the three most critical issues for multicultural advocates in no particular order are firstly getting service delivery right for new and emerging communities, secondly getting service delivery right for our ageing post-war immigrants, and finally fostering community harmony and good will particularly with regard to the recent unwarranted attacks on our Australian-Muslim community by senior political figures.

I am pleased to say at ECCV we are addressing all these issues and just last week also released a report on language services for our new and emerging communities. So we are now we are pleased to move to the other key issue of multicultural aged care services.

With our post-war immigrants now entering their senior years, there has never been a more urgent need for a comprehensive government policy that addresses the needs of this large cohort of our ageing population.

Many post-war immigrants, helped build the economic, social and cultural fabric of Victoria. For instance I think of my Dutch grandparents and father who arrived in the 1950s from Amsterdam, to build new lives in Victoria after Holland was devastated by the Second World War. They quickly set to work building hundreds of houses in the South-Eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

Then there are the large numbers of post-war immigrant workers from countries like Italy, Greece, Germany, Poland, Malta, Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia who often did the difficult jobs needed in a post-war boom economy. Jobs like building our renowned Snowy Mountains Scheme. Our more recently arrived immigrants groups such as our wonderful Vietnamese community will also see their ageing profile peak in the coming decades.

The statistics are of course important. As the terrific report on Cultural Diversity and HACC published by the Department of Human Services and written by Anna Howe showed, in 2011 38% of Melbourne’s seniors’ population will be from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. That is a huge statistic by any measure. Statistics show that Victoria is Australia’s most multicultural state, just edging out New South Wales, but it is also clear we have the largest multicultural CALD population. This made the Commonwealth’s recent cuts to the Victorian Community Partners Program, affecting the Polish, Maltese, Spanish, Italian and Greek communities among others, particularly disappointing.

Statistics in our report show that by country of birth the Italian, Greek, German, Polish and Dutch communities are now the largest older culturally and linguistically divers populations in Victoria in that order. Currently an amazing 41% of the Dutch-born Victorian population are over the age of 65. By 2021 the oldest CALD communities in order will be the Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Macedonian communities. This shows the eventual emergence of Asian communities in our community’s ageing profile.

Now I want to say from the outset that the Victorian Government has made important steps in beginning to address these issues. The Culturally Equitable Gateways Strategy has been significant in addressing cultural awareness issues for mainstream home and community care providers like local government, although of course funding may run out for this initiative in June next year. The Cultural Action Planning Framework has put mainstream providers on notice for the need to develop cultural diversity plans. But as always more work needs to be done and so I now come to our Multicultural Aged Care Strategy.

The key element of our Multicultural Aged Care Strategy is that all these various piecemeal programs be combined into one as a Multicultural Aged Care Strategy, which would address this significant public policy challenge.

The second element of the strategy is a recommendation to strengthen the capacity of ethno-specific service providers to effectively deliver home and community care or HACC. This is of course a perennial battle between our ethnic communities and the Victorian Government. But we at ECCV as always feel that ethno-specific and multicultural service providers do have the capacity to become HACC Basic service providers when there communities are of a sufficient size to justify ethno-specific service delivery.

JewishCare, who are probably the only ethno-specific agency providing a suite of Basic HACC services show that it can be done. With our larger ageing migrant groups such as the Italians, Greeks and Polish communities there is no reason that they should not provide ethno-specific HACC Basic services to their communities.

As a table in our report shows of the top ten older ethnic communities in Victoria, eight are providing decent and high standard Commonwealth funded residential aged care services to their communities. But the table also shows that virtually none of the top ten older communities are providing State and Commonwealth funded HACC Basic services. We think that this inequity represents a blind spot in current HACC service planning and ask that the incoming government carefully consider this issue.

The third element of our Multicultural Aged Care Strategy relates closely to the second is a recommendation to provide for more client choice in selecting HACC services. We in the ethnic community sector are fairly confident that many culturally and linguistically diverse older people would be more satisfied in receiving ethno-specific services if they were provided with that choice, just as many would be happy to continue receiving services from existing providers.

The fourth element of the strategy is ensuring that state public sector aged care facilities provide culturally sensitive services where appropriate. The State of Victoria is the largest residential aged care provider in Victoria and as such is a key part of getting culturally competent residential aged care service delivery right.

The final fifth and six elements of the strategy call for greater funding ethnic senior citizens clubs to run healthy living programs so that our ethnic seniors can benefit from active and healthy living programs and also to ensure any elder abuse in ethnic communities is appropriately addressed.

We hope the strategy guides the policy development of Government and political parties in the lead up to the November election. I encourage you all to have a good look at the report, spread the word about the need for a Multicultural Aged Care Strategy and would welcome feedback on the report. Thank you.