Carers in a risky business

CHAD is a border collie blissfully unaware that he is a minor celebrity in the local press, the Victorian parliament and in lawyers' letters barking loudly about actions that have flowed from his bite. A beloved family pet, Chad nipped one of the relief carers who help feed and bathe Joshua Krupjak, 12, and his brother Dylan, 6, who are profoundly disabled.

Their mother, Lisa Krupjak, did not witness the incident, which occurred as the carer was departing the family's small acreage in Victoria's Latrobe Valley. It was not the bite so much as the carer's negative reaction to a tetanus shot that resulted in her sick leave and a WorkCover claim for compensation.

The Krupjaks were told at the time not to worry because insurance would take care of it. More than a year passed, then last month they received notice of a writ from WorkCover seeking to recover third-party costs of $15,000 on the grounds that the family had failed to provide a safe workplace. Faced with a politically explosive public relations cocktail of wheelchair-bound children and a struggling single-income family, WorkCover told the Krupjaks they would not be out of pocket and instead lodged a writ with the company that insures their house and contents.

Few have cottoned on to the importance of the precedent this case sets in an ageing society as elderly householders become increasingly dependent on an army of nurses, cleaners and carers arriving daily to supply a raft of personal services.

More than 700,000 Australians receive government-funded help so they can remain in their own homes and out of institutional care. Many of them are stricken with dementia or physical frailty and disability. Many are isolated from younger family members. Who knows if they own dogs or wonky flex cords or rotting floorboards or loose carpet tiles that lift and trip guests unfamiliar with eccentricities that are part of the furniture for inhabitants with forgetful minds and failing vision?

The rule of thumb for health spending stipulates that medical bills are highest in the last year of life but the problem is determining when that period begins. This rule is inverted by the green banana test, with elderly shoppers less likely to buy fruit they may not live to eat. Similar thriftiness applies to household maintenance. Why pay for new floor coverings when you won't get to wear them in?

How many elderly or disabled Australians receiving personal care services realise that their house is a workplace and if a carer is injured on the premises, then lounges, kitchens and bathrooms will be judged according to a vast array of occupational health and safety standards?

The agencies employing carers and nurses are responsible for ensuring standards are met. Australia's biggest home care provider, the Royal District Nursing Service, is introducing world-first technology so staff can log details about a client's house and its risks in a central database thatis continually updated to minimise workplace accidents. But many other providers of care are smaller not-for-profits on shoestring budgets with scant resources to conduct door-to-door inspections of properties where the risks may change from week to week. Lisa Krupjak says WorkCover has never assessed her property. Neither have the regional agencies that are involved in brokering care arrangements for her sons.

"We were never told to restrain or confine any of our animals and had no reason to believe anyone would be at risk," she says. "No assessment was done to say my place is safe or unsafe. Now I am demanding that assessments are done and legally documented."

Since the incident the Krupjaks have ensured that Chad is restrained whenever carers visit the property. But the threat of legal action against the family's household insurance policy is worrying for elderly people and parents of disabled children who rely on home help.

Victoria exempts community service volunteers from personal liability claims and Jean Tops, president of the Gippsland Carers Association, wants national reform to grant immunity to the aged, sick and families with disabled children who get home-based care. NSW and Queensland also allow WorkCover to recover third-party costs, which the Victorian authority has been clawing back with increasing success. The state's Opposition WorkCover spokesman Bill Forwood, is drafting a private member's bill to protect householders from being sued. "I don't think the most vulnerable people in our society are the ones who should be held responsible," he says.

Victoria's WorkCover is awake to the nightmare ahead. A spokeswoman confirms that the authority is preparing kits for the homecare industry and householders to warn them of the potential occupational health and safety tripwires behind suburban veneers.

Slips, trips and falls in houses that, like their inhabitants, have seen better days or strains from lifting the elderly and disabled without hospital hoists and equipment suggest personal injury claims and pursuit of third-party recovery is an accident waiting to happen.

Article from www.theaustralian.news.com.au