Sue Kedgley

Wellington, May 12 NZPA - The country would be outraged if children were treated as poorly as the elderly were, Green MP Sue Kedgley said today after the first meeting in a Grey Power-Labour-Greens inquiry into aged care.

About 100 people attended the meeting at Paraparaumu on Kapiti Coast.

Ms Kedgley said people raised concerns about quality of aged care including understaffing and poor pay for carers.

"We've got a largely untrained workforce dealing with people who are becoming increasingly frail and dependent," she told NZPA.

"The sort of things they are talking about: malnutrition, dehydration, there are horror stories -- they are being put on psychotic medication to keep them quiet, not being showered, not having their incontinence pads changed, left with wet beds and clothing not being changed on a regular basis... all of those sort of things. If that was happening amongst pre-schoolers there would be a national scandal.

"If toddlers were being left unfed, malnourished, dehydrated with inadequate care and untrained staff there'd be a national scandal. The question is why do we turn a blind eye to this? Accept this? There has been a slew of these reports demonstrating this is happening on a routine basis."

Many elderly had also raised concerns about cuts to home care help. Some district health boards were reducing the amount they spend on in-home support.

A partly blind woman with a bad back who could not clean her home told the meeting she was stressed about being assessed. An elderly man with prostate cancer and incontinency and his wife, who could not do housework because of a shoulder problem, were assessed and lost their support.

Some had asked for a face-to-face assessment but that was rejected and some struggled to hear questions on the phone.

Ms Kedgley and Labour's Winnie Laban announced last month their investigation would gather information about the level of care provided to elderly both in rest homes and in their own homes.

It followed concerns sparked by recent damning reports from the Health and Disability Commissioner involving rest homes, and by the Auditor-General over the general state of aged residential care in New Zealand.

Ms Laban said there had been a flood of responses from around the country about the investigation.

Nineteen public meetings are scheduled, the last of which takes place in Greymouth on June 20.