Australia's welfare 2009

Key points

This section presents selected findings from the report. Each chapter from 2 to 7 also begins with its own list of key points. Please refer to the index for more detail on these topics.

Children, youth and families

• Over half a million Australian children (15%) lived in jobless families in 2006.
• Almost three-in-four (72%) children aged 3–6 years not in school usually attended preschool or a preschool program in long day care in 2008. Attendance was lower in families where parents were not employed.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people continue to be disadvantaged across a number of areas—less likely to attend preschool and school, meet minimum standards for literacy and numeracy and to continue their schooling to Year 12, are over-represented in the child protection system, and are more likely to be under juvenile justice supervision.

Ageing and aged care

• The planning of the allocation of places in Australian Government programs for residential and community care is under review, with the programs continuing to grow and reflect the structural changes in the ageing population.
• Home and Community Care (HACC) continues to reach the largest number of older clients in community care.
• Deeper understanding of how clients interact with the programs and services in the aged care system is being aided by data linkage between programs. The study of pathways in aged care (PIAC study) has led to a linked dataset which enables a study into patterns and dynamics in aged care service use.

Disability and disability services

• The number of people with disability doubled between 1981 and 2003, to reach an estimated 3.9 million Australians.
• The rate of growth in the number of people with profound or severe core activity limitation, that is, people who need help with core daily activities, was even higher (173% increase). Estimated to be around 1.5 million Australians by 2010, the number of people with this high level of disability is projected to increase to almost 2.3 million by 2030—roughly equivalent to the entire population of Western Australia in 2009.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more than twice as likely as non-Indigenous Australians to need help with core daily activities because of disability.
• Disability shows an uneven geographic distribution, not always linked to remoteness. Census data on capital cities show that higher levels of disability tend to be more prevalent in areas of relative economic disadvantage.

Carers and informal care

• Most informal carers are women, aged between 25 and 54 years, and live with the person for whom they care. They are the main source of assistance for most people with disability and other long-term conditions, and the aged.
• Respite care is the major service type that specifically supports carers, yet few carers report that they have used respite services. Many carers who had used respite care previously (but not recently) said that they did not need it, they preferred not to use it or that their care recipient did not want it. For some carers this may indicate a lack of appropriate respite services.
• Many carers do not find the caring role satisfying, and many experience lower health and wellbeing than non-carers as well as considerable social disadvantage. Many carers also experience financial disadvantage, which for some (and particularly female carers) is related to their reduced capacity to participate in paid work as a result of their caring responsibilities.
• Support services in the future will have to meet increased demand but may also need to adopt new approaches to service delivery (including the need to close service gaps) and support shared-care responsibilities. This includes care that is shared more widely within informal care networks, but also a stronger shared-care approach between informal carers and formal support services.

Housing and housing assistance

• Current demand for affordable housing exceeds supply and the continued decline in affordability in the private rental market may further increase the demand for social housing.
• The largest ever single investment in social housing, and a new national housing agreement, will bring about significant changes in the supply and delivery of housing assistance to low-income households.

Homelessness

• Although homelessness is widely regarded as a metropolitan issue and inner city areas do have high rates of homelessness, there are also high rates of homelessness in regional and remote areas.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are over-represented in the homeless population, particularly in the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP). On Census night 2006, Indigenous peoples were around 2% of Australians, but were 9% of homeless people. In 2007–08, 18% of SAAP clients and 26% of accompanying children were Indigenous.
• Family homelessness is an issue of growing concern. Of homeless people in Australia on Census night 2006, over a quarter (26%) were members of homeless families with children (up 17% from 2001). Families with children received over half (51%) of the total periods of support provided by SAAP in 2007–08 (up 45% from 2001–02).