Rose Plater is General Manager at Paynters and co-host of Time Well Spent. She spent her career running residential aged care homes before moving into the design and construction side of the sector, and that operator’s view shapes how she reads policy — she has had to roster to the funding model, not just comment on it. Rose brings the practical test to every episode: what does this actually change on the floor on a Tuesday afternoon? She is a vocal advocate for measuring care outcomes rather than care inputs, for small household models, and for the multidisciplinary teams that the current definition of direct care leaves out. On Time Well Spent she has pressed department officials, regulators and provider chief executives on the gap between what policy intends and what it funds, and she is candid that hosts who don’t run homes carry a privilege that operators do not — no audit, no registration, no grant round to protect.
Sex and Intimacy in Aged Care: Rights, Consent and SIRS
Time Well Spent is an aged care podcast hosted by Dane Mitchell and Rose Plater. This session is a live episode recorded on stage: a conversation between people who work in the sector, not a presentation with slides.
The topic is one most providers handle badly. Standard 1 of the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards names intimacy, including sexual and gender expression, as something an older person has a right to. The same legislation requires providers to report unlawful sexual contact through the Serious Incident Response Scheme. Those two obligations meet in a corridor at eight at night, when a care worker opens a door and decides on the spot whether they have seen a relationship or an incident. Most have had no training for that moment.
They are joined by Mel Argent, Chief Executive Officer of Rockpool Residential Aged Care, who answers as a provider. The session works through real cases, not principles.
A couple living with advanced dementia who believed they were married, and what the home did: met both families, lowered the bed to reduce fall risk, put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. The hardest part was not the families. It was staff whose personal and religious beliefs sat against the residents’ rights.
A near-identical case where the home consulted and documented everything properly, and a family member still complained to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.
A behaviour support plan recording “new behaviour identified: resident observed masturbating” about a 74-year-old man, alone in his room with the door closed, whose privacy staff had interrupted by walking in without knocking.
That case leads to the question the session is built around. When a staff member walks in on two consenting residents and tells them they have done something wrong, where is the harm — in what the residents did, or in the shame that followed? The reporting scheme was written for abuse. Providers are applying it to relationships.
The podcast also covers consent when capacity fluctuates, recording a person’s wishes while they still can, what a substitute decision-maker can and cannot refuse, and why older buildings still make residents feel they need permission.
Extended audience questions follow, anonymously through Slido or on a roving microphone. Delegates leave with language for the conversation, a defensible position on consent and reporting, and a reason to reread their own behaviour support plans.