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Living longer, living better.

The Living Longer Living Better, aged care reform package was announced on  20 April 2012. The package involves a comprehensive 10 year plan to reshape aged care and build a better, fairer and more nationally consistent aged care system.

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My Aged Care is an Australian Government website providing people with up-to-date information about Australia’s aged care system and services. 
 
My Aged Care centralises information in one, easily accessible and user-friendly place.  This will ensure you can access information on aged care, have your needs assessed and find services within your local area.

Visit their site:  http://www.myagedcare.gov.au

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Encyclical letter of
PopePaul VI, Humanae Vitae, sponsored the “Families of Australia Foundation”at an Internationl Congress in Sydney in 1988.The following Address was given by Sr Rose Mary Turner lsp.
It remains very relevant for our time.

Journeying with the frail  Elderly

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Little Sisters of the Poor - Homes Icon (8).png

I have been asked to speak today because I am a Little Sister of the Poor– and for those of you who do not know the Little Sisters, we are aCongregation withinthe Church, dedicated to the service of theElderly. Our Foundress, St Jeanne Jugan, took the initial step towards founding this work that we do, when, in 1839, she carried an elderly blind lady from the street to her home, and began to care for her.  Today, each sister takes a fourth vow of “Hospitality” and our hospitaller mission is lived out in a family spirit with the elderly.

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We live in community with them, share our lives with them, and seek to rejoice and console them in their living, and keep constant prayerful vigil with them in their dying.
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In modern society, even the fundamental values of human life are often called into question and people can experience anxieties about the meaning of advanced old age and death. Most vulnerable are the frail elderly, who, for one reason or another, are dependent on others. The elderly can teach the young that it is important to value life for itself, and in itself. Life is God’s special gift to them and becomes their gift in return to Him.  If frailty and dependence comes, and they come to some of the elderly, especially those who live to be very old, then it is a precious time for both the individual concerned and for those concerned for the individual.  It is a time of fulfilment and completion.  Pope Pius XII once said to a group of nurses that Christ was present twice over at the bedside of a very sick person – the suffering Christ in the person needing care, and the healing, caring Christ in the person of the attendant.
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Death itself needs to be understood in its full Christian dimension, for it is only then that the questions of life can be answered rightly. We will look at death in the broader context that necessarily includes the sometimes long period of preparation that precedes it in the life of the frail elderly person.  For who can say when terminal care begins with the frail elderly? For the Christian, this period of life is a time of waiting on the Lord.  It is a time to say an unconditional ‘YES’ to God in faith and trust.  It is a time when perhaps even beyond words, existence itself can be an act of faith.

Our Mission is to offer the neediest elderly of every race and religion a home where they will be welcomed as Christ, cared for as family and accompanied with dignity until God calls them to himself.

We adhere at all times to the Philosophy, Ethics and Moral Law of the Catholic Church, from whom the Congregation has received its mission.

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