At 96, Val Fell is on a mission to share new aged care reforms that put participants first

Navigating a complex aged care system from a hospital bed, Illawarra-based dementia advocate Val Fell experienced firsthand the challenges facing elderly Australians.

Her hospital stay last year further fuelled what has already been a passionate mission to reform aged care and dementia support.

For the 96-year-old, it was witnessing two of her older sisters nurse their husbands through Alzheimer’s, before her own late husband’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2006 that was a catalyst in her becoming a leading voice in dementia awareness.

Val is also a prominent advocate on the government’s Council of Elders, which she joined in 2021 using her lived experiences to drive systemic change.

Having just returned from Canberra in her role on the council, a key focus of her work now is explaining the new Aged Care Act, which takes effect on 1 July.

Unlike the 1997 legislation, the new act includes a Statement of Rights that is enforceable and places participants at the centre of care, emphasising individual rights and clarity around appropriate treatment when seeking or receiving aged care.

“This new act is entirely different,” she said.

“The 1997 act had the providers at the centre of the whole thing – they were the ones who were being funded, and they were the ones who were making the decisions.

“The new act has the participants at the centre.

“The Statement of Rights means you have the right to make your own decisions, to live independently if you wish, and to go into care which must be carried out by trained people in a meaningful way.”

Val now wants to find opportunities to help people better understand it, having already booked a string of speaking opportunities.

“My job with the council initially was to go through and find out what people wanted, and we all got together and talked about that and then gave advice to the minister,” she said of the council, which was made up of a diverse group of people from the LGBQI community through to First Nations people and a person living with dementia.

“Now that the act has been passed, the value is making sure it’s implemented properly, and the community knows how to operate within it.

“My duty now is to go out and talk to people about it.”

She said it didn’t matter whether it was speaking at a Rotary dinner or a two-hour Q&A session for a community event, she was willing to show up.

“I don’t mind, as long as they get to know something about the new act and understand what it’s about,” she said.

When Val speaks, she’s coming from both personal and policy perspectives.

After her late husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it set her off on a path that involved completing a support group facilitator course with Dementia Australia in 2013 and forming the Corrimal Dementia Carers Support Group the same year, which she’s still involved in.

She then started organising the now annual Illawarra Dementia Public Forum in September, before joining the Council of Elders to advise government on creating more responsive and compassionate aged care systems that respect the dignity of older Australians.

All these roles meant she’s had to take “a couple of gap years” with the Bachelor of Dementia Care she’s studying.

Through her various roles, her aim is to address critical challenges in the aged care sector, which have included significant workforce shortages, a growing demand for care services and systemic issues such as bed shortages and lengthy assessment processes.

“At the moment we’ve had this problem with bed-block,” she said.

“I have experienced that myself, because I was in hospital last year and it was difficult for me to get a bed.

“I did get a bed but I was in a locked geriatric ward with dementia patients who were either waiting to go home with high level care – which they couldn’t get, because it doesn’t exist in the home care field – or go into a nursing home.”

Val said the next issue was then getting out of the bed due to lengthy wait times with the aged care assessment system, eventually transitioning out of hospital with six weeks of care provided. The new act would have provided her a longer period of care.

She said that often up to 150 older people or people with disabilities were experiencing delayed discharge in any given week, even though they didn’t need acute care, and it was an issue she spoke about in front of the Regional Health and Aged Care Taskforce this month.

The taskforce met in Wollongong on 14 March, with government representatives, researchers, providers and people invested in finding ways around bed-block and the aged care bed shortages.

“It doesn’t matter how many beds we build, the demand is still going to increase,” she said.

“So we’ve got to make sure that demand no longer exceeds supply.

“We’re looking to provide the supply of beds by working collaboratively as we are in this area as an Illawarra taskforce to make sure everything goes well here.”

She said there were things that could be done, including overcoming issues with development application approval for the building of aged care facilities and steering more young people down a career path into aged care.

“It doesn’t matter how many beds we get, if we haven’t got a workforce we can’t do anything about it.”