The aged care sector has been left carrying an estimated half a billion dollars of debt due to delays in the payment of COVID grants. The grants were introduced at the start of the pandemic to cover the additional costs of dealing with coronavirus outbreaks in aged care.
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00:00 Ashfield Baptist Homes here in Sydney expects to post a loss this year for the first time
00:07 in its 92-year history. The home is still waiting on the payment of almost half a million
00:13 dollars in COVID grants. Now at the beginning of the pandemic, care homes like this one
00:18 were promised by the federal government that they would be reimbursed for any additional
00:22 costs. Those costs include extra staffing that would have to be brought on and PPE and
00:27 infection control measures. Now sometimes a year later, they're still waiting for those
00:33 grants to be paid and they're saying that having to carry that debt is putting pressure
00:38 on smaller operators. And there have been numbers of instances, Wesley Mission being
00:44 one just closing the doors and saying we're not going to participate in the residential
00:50 aged care space anymore. The federal government says it can't give a figure for the total
00:55 amount of outstanding claims for COVID grants. But we do know back in March, the figure they
00:59 provided was $570 million. Now the aged care sector says that while some of those claims
01:07 will have been repaid, they estimate the total outstanding is still half a billion dollars.
01:14 We understand there has to be a process. This is public money. The government has to do
01:17 its due diligence, make sure people aren't claiming for things they shouldn't. But ultimately
01:22 that money should still be flowing much faster. The delays come at a time when the sector
01:26 is already dealing with additional costs as a result of reforms that have come out of
01:31 the Royal Commission into aged care. They include a 15% pay rise for the lowest paid
01:36 workers that came into effect this month. Plus, there's now a requirement to have a
01:40 registered nurse on duty around the clock. The latest financial snapshot shows that 54%
01:47 of homes are operating at a loss. 36 have closed in the past year. A spokesperson for
01:54 federal aged care minister Annika Wells said extra staff are being brought on to deal with
02:00 the backlog of claims and that priority is being given to homes known to be in significant
02:06 financial distress.
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