It makes bloodcurdling reading, the series of articles by Fairfax Media on residential aged care in Australia.
And, it’s not just about ‘a few bad apples’.
Residential aged care is big business, profits take precedence over care, the accreditation system eclipses neglect and abuses, the complaints process is ineffectual, and the market myth camouflages the cracks.
This post expands these points, drawing on the articles.

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‘I’ have hope and passion and belief in social justice. The embodied ‘me’ too often feels defeated, especially when my body is behaving badly. This separation of ‘I’ and ‘me’ is not an everyday occurrence, and I wonder about other people’s experiences.

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My old friend is scared about the aged care cuts. She lives in a facility where rumour runs rife about being dumped on the street or stranded in bed without incontinence pads. It would be easy to buy into divisiveness about the ‘burden’ of old people, but solidarity is our best defence against neoliberalism.

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