Extended Aged Care at Home (EACH) and EACH Dementia (EACHD) packages

Extended Aged Care at Home Packages are designed to provide home based care with a standard of nursing and personal care that is equivalent to that received in high level residential care. High level community care is also available for people with dementia through EACH Dementia packages. Information on accessing these packages can be found on the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing website (EACH, EACH Dementia).

- EACH and EACH Dementia statistics online

The AIHW has included information on the provision of EACH packages and their recipients in its annual statistics publications from 2004-05, and on EACH Dementia packages since 2005-06.

The first report which included information on EACH packages is Community Aged Care Packages in Australia: A statistical overview 2004-05.

Provision of EACH Dementia packages started in March 2006 and reporting of data on this program was included in the annual statistics publication. The title of the publication was changed to Aged care packages in the community, to reflect the broader range of packages included in the publication (CACPs, EACH packages and EACH Dementia packages).

- Extended Aged Care at Home (EACH) 2002 Census

The census was conducted over a 7 day period beginning on 6 May 2002. At the time of the census, there were 10 service providers and 288 recipients of Extended Aged Care at Home Packages. 

A copy of the report, Extended Aged Care at Home Census 2002, is available for purchase from the AIHW or can be downloaded as an Adobe Acrobat PDF document (Report and media release). 

The report of the census provides information on: 

• the characteristics of the care recipients (age, sex, country of birth, language spoken at home, English proficiency, diagnosis of dementia, living arrangements, type of accommodation, carer availability, activity limitations, and veterans' entitlements);
• the assistance received (duration of care, types and amounts of assistance, equipment available at care recipients' residences, use of residential respite care, and reason for ceasing to receive a package)   
• the service providers (type, numbers of packages managed, administrative arrangements, and use of brokerage to provide services).

The report also includes some comparisons with client characteristics from Home and Community Care MDS, and Community Aged Care data derived from DoHA's administrative database (ACCMIS). 

Census Privacy issues

A range of measures were adopted to protect the privacy of clients, and to comply with requirements applying to the AIHW, the Department and approved providers under the Aged Care Act 1997, and the Privacy Act 1988. All census forms were returned by service providers to the Department of Health and Ageing where the names of clients were removed from the care recipient forms prior to forwarding them to the AIHW for data entry and analysis. Only those letters of name required for creating the HACC statistical linkage key were provided to the Institute. 

In addition, the confidentiality and security of data sent to the AIHW is protected under the provisions of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987 and the Privacy Act 1988. The AIHW has documented procedures, approved by its Board, covering these topics and a strong culture of ensuring data security.  

Plain English information about the Privacy Act is available on the Privacy Commissioner's website.

 

Page last reviewed on 17 October 2006