AUSTRALIANS living with dementia have voiced their care needs, which they say are missing from the government's new aged care standards.
Dementia Australia will today deliver a report to the Minister for Ageing Richard Colbeck, outlining what people with a lived experience of the disease want included in their care.
The paper offers a dementia-specific response to all eight of the Morrison government's aged care quality standards, which came into effect on July 1.
It recommends a baseline of "support, respect and ultimately, improved quality of life," for dementia sufferers, as well as examples of "gold-standard" care.
The new benchmarks are a "vast improvement" on previous models, Dementia Australia's executive director of customer engagement Kaele Stokes told AAP on Wednesday.
But they fail to account for the difference between standard and dementia aged care, Ms Stokes said.
"We need to be approaching it from the point of view of the consumer, what they want rather than just clinical outcomes," she said.
The body surveyed people with lived experience of dementia, including carers and families, in focus groups held across the nation and at a National Consumer Summit in June.
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No matter their culture, race or sexuality they all wanted one thing: respect.
"Ultimately most of the things important to dementia patients aren't in relation to clinical care," Ms Stokes said.
A lack of understanding about dementia, in both aged care and society effects the "trajectory of the disease, affects diagnoses and access to clinical and other support", she added.
Dementia Australia wants a commitment from the Minister for Ageing that he will add its findings to current standards before the royal commission into ageing delivers its findings.
None of the confronting evidence of abuse and neglect had come as a surprise, Ms Stokes said.
"It's just reinforced that which people have already been telling us," she said.
Australian Associated Press
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