Source: Aged Care Association
Recently, I received an email from a woman trying to help her mother navigate the aged care system. She is highly educated, with multiple post-graduate qualifications. Yet she told me she still couldn’t work out what on earth was going on.
Her request was simple: “Plain language please.” It’s hard to argue with that.
Because what she described is something we are hearing more and more. Families enter the aged care system at a time when they are already under pressure. A parent’s health is declining, decisions need to be made quickly, and emotions are running high. And into that moment, we place people in a system that is incredibly difficult to understand. They are confronted with terms that sound official but make little sense in practice. “Maximum contribution” is one example. It sounds clear enough, but it isn’t actually a maximum in any meaningful way for families. Then there are subsidies, thresholds, premiums, and a long list of acronyms that vary depending on who you are talking to. Even people working within the system can struggle to explain them consistently. So what chance do families have?
It would be easy to dismiss this as a communication issue. It is not. It is a symptom of something much deeper. The system itself is fragmented. Different agencies use different language. Rules can vary depending on where you live. Definitions shift over time. And at the centre of it all is a funding model that is anything but transparent.
When people do not understand what they are entitled to, or what they will be expected to pay, they are left trying to make life-changing decisions in the dark. That has real consequences. Families delay decisions because they are unsure. Some make choices they later regret. Others carry on without support until they reach crisis point. Carers burn out. Hospital admissions increase. Pressure builds across the entire system.
A system that is hard to understand is not a minor inconvenience. It is a system that is failing the people it is meant to serve. We would not accept this anywhere else. If people could not understand their tax obligations or their power bill, there would be immediate calls for change. Yet in aged care, where the stakes are far higher, complexity has become normalised. It should not be.
At the Aged Care Association, we have been pushing Government on reforms to address the underlying problems. A key part of that is making funding far more transparent. At the moment, too much is bundled together in ways that are difficult to explain and even harder for families to understand. We are proposing a split funding model that clearly separates what is being paid for clinical care from accommodation and everyday living costs. This is not just a technical change. It is about making the system understandable, so families can see what they are paying for and why.
Alongside that, we need a much stronger commitment to plain language across the entire system. The same terms should mean the same thing everywhere in the country. They should reflect what people actually experience, not what makes sense on a policy spreadsheet. And they should be written in a way that ordinary people can understand without needing an interpreter. This is about fairness.
A system that requires people to “figure it out” advantages those who have the time, confidence, and support to navigate it. Everyone else is left behind. That is not how a public system should operate.
Aged care is one of the most important services we provide as a country. It supports people at a vulnerable stage of life and the families who stand beside them. Those families should not have to become experts just to understand their options. They should be able to ask a question, get a straight answer, and make a decision with confidence.
The woman who wrote to me was not asking for more funding or special treatment. She was asking for something very basic. Make it understandable.
That is not too much to ask. And it is something we can fix, if we choose to.
