Consumer protection: a submission to the review of the Aged Care Complaints Investigation Scheme

In this submission, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) examines the Aged Care Investigation Scheme (CIS) against principles of best practice in complaint handling and finds significant areas of improvement.

The analysis takes into account the circumstances of aged care residents and their family carers who are in a difficult situation when making complaints. Since the resident is in the full-time care of the organisation that is the subject of the complaint, family carers and residents naturally fear retribution. This requires the CIS to be more flexible when accepting complaints and reviews of decisions.

The areas of improvement that PIAC calls for include: transparency and accountability;