The challenge of representing hundreds of providers – LASA details its consultation for Royal Commission

Further follow-up to last week’s story on providers rejecting that only 1.7% of aged care and home care providers made submissions to the Royal Commission’s Consultation Paper. Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) – which is the largest of the sector’s peak organisations – has provided detailed information on how they canvassed opinions from its members. LASA says around 70 CEOs from across its membership were involved in the development of its 29-page submission on the Commissioners’ new model for Australia’s future aged care system.

“To assist this process LASA also conducted information sessions in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart and Perth attended by 489 Member representatives.”

They also had 473 member representatives take part in a national webinar on the submission. According to LASA, this feedback from their members and affiliates and discussion with the Royal Commission’s administration led to a “significant reframing of the approach” that their submission takes.

“Rather than providing LASA’s broader views on system redesign at this stage, our submission now focuses on responding to specific issues raised in the consultation paper, particularly the challenges and implications of an NDIS style approach to allocating funding.”

This final detail reflects the real challenge facing LASA and the other peaks when it comes to presenting the sector’s views to the Commissioners. With such a wide membership – and presumably a diverse range of views – how do they represent their entire membership base? Certainly, providers should be supporting their peak bodies by contributing to their submissions. But there is also a case for providers – especially those with strong opinions on the direction of the Commissioners’ model – to make separate submissions. While submissions on the Consultation Paper are now closed, public submissions to the Royal Commission are still open until 30 April 2020 – just 10 weeks away. LASA says it will now provide further submissions on system reform before this deadline. Will others join them? Side note: LASA – and others – also noted that the Royal Commission reserves the right to not publish some submissions. The Royal Commission confirmed only a “small number” of submissions on Consultation Paper 1 were not published at the request of authors who did not want their submission to be made public.