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Building Better Lives® Ambassador Grayden Moore and tennis ace Sam Stosur featured in a story that went to air last night about their ongoing friendship, with Sam now preparing for Wimbledon.

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TODAY’S Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report into the Younger People with Disability in Aged Care Program is a wake up call on the plight of the 3500 young Australians under 60 who live in aged nursing homes.

Summer Foundation CEO Di Winkler said government initiatives to move young people out of nursing homes were not moving fast enough.

>“The five-year initiative to move 689 people out of nursing homes by July 2011 has so far only found alternative accommodation for 163 people,” Ms Winkler said.

“In additional to being slow to develop alternative accommodation, this initiative has not focused enough on the systemic change required to proactively prevent new admissions of young people to aged care facilities,” she said.

“The disability and health sectors need to jointly develop and fund services that give people the time and rehabilitation they need to maximise recovery and create pathways from hospital to community living.

Ms Winkler said new accommodation options being developed were not keeping up with demand.

“These accommodation options will soon be full to capacity, but more than 250 people aged under 50 will likely be admitted to residential aged care facilities each year in Australia,” Ms Winkler said.

Click here to download media release.

After a long delay the Younger People with Disability in Residential Aged Care (YPIRAC) Program Mid-term Evaluation was today released by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Services http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx). The government funded report is not a comprehensive evaluation because it only provides the perspective of program managers in each state and territory.

The Summer Foundation and Monash University have completed an independent study called Getting Out, which evaluates the progress of the current five-year $244 million national Younger People in Residential Aged Care (YPIRAC) program. The program was established by COAG in July 2006 to reduce the number of younger people (defined as aged under 50 years) with disabilities living in aged care.

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Building Better Lives® campaign ambassador Grayden Moore has known Sam Stosur for many years - since they played junior tennis together on the Gold Coast. Following the skateboarding accident that left Grayden with a severe acquired brain injury (ABI), their friendship has continued, which is not a common story for most ABI sufferers.

On the weekend (22/23 May) the story of their friendship is featured in the Good weekend magazine's "2 of Us", which you can find in both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, or download here.

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