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Young People in Nursing Homes – Australia’s Hidden Crisis

Written by Ibrahim Sesay on .

A National Promise Unfulfilled

Imagine being in your 30s planning a career, friendships, independence, maybe your own place. Now imagine that your only available housing option is a nursing home. You wake up surrounded by people three times your age, in an environment designed for end-of-life care, not for living. This isn’t fiction. It’s the reality still faced by more than a thousand young Australians with disability in 2025. When the Younger People in Residential Aged Care (YPIRAC) Strategy 2020–2025 was launched, Australia promised no one under 65 would be living in aged care by 2025. The goal was clear: no one under 45 in aged care by 2022 and no one under 65 by 2025. But as the deadline looms, around 1,100 Australians under 65 remain in residential aged care. Each number represents a person who wanted a home not an institution. For advocates, it’s a national shame; for government, a “transition challenge.” For those living it, it’s both.

How Young People End Up in Aged Care

The path to aged care for younger people usually begins with crisis a car accident, stroke, or sudden illness. After rehabilitation, hospital staff face pressure to discharge patients quickly, yet there’s nowhere suitable to send them. Families enter a bureaucratic maze of NDIS paperwork, housing searches, and assessments, only to find there’s no accessible or affordable alternative. Aged care becomes the “temporary” fix. But temporary often turns permanent.

1. The Funding Maze

Even with the NDIS, funding pathways are fragmented. Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) covers the building itself the bricks and mortar while Supported Independent Living (SIL) funds the staff support required to live there. The two must align perfectly. If SDA is approved but SIL isn’t, the person can’t move in. Many wait months, sometimes years, stuck in hospitals or aged care facilities while paperwork moves slowly.

2. Housing Shortage and Location Gaps

Accessible homes are scarce, particularly outside Sydney and Melbourne. Rural and regional areas face chronic shortages. A young person from Wagga Wagga or Townsville may have to move hundreds of kilometres to find suitable housing or enter aged care near home. Some SDA properties don’t meet “high-physical-support” standards or robust design needs for those requiring behavioural support, leaving few real options.

3. Slow and Complex NDIS Processes

NDIS approvals demand extensive documentation medical reports, functional assessments, letters from allied health professionals. The average SDA decision can take over six months. For someone in hospital limbo, that’s an eternity. Delays mean hospitals keep beds occupied, and aged-care facilities become overflow housing.

4. Policy Loopholes and Fragmentation

The upcoming Aged Care Act includes exceptions for certain groups (First Nations people aged 50+ or people experiencing homelessness over 50). While these reflect genuine need, they risk re-normalising younger placements instead of solving the root problem housing scarcity and poor coordination between systems.

5. Health and Hospital Bottlenecks

Hospitals feed directly into aged care when no “discharge-to-home” system exists. Without rapid NDIS responses or transition programs, clinicians face impossible choices: keep someone in a hospital bed indefinitely, or send them to aged care “temporarily.” The system’s rigidity turns compassion into compromise.

The Human Cost Behind Policy

Behind every number is a person like Jake, a 28-year-old from regional NSW who acquired a brain injury after a car accident. After two years in rehabilitation, he was discharged into aged care because there were no accessible homes nearby. His family visits weekly. Most of his days are spent watching TV with residents in their 80s. “Everyone’s kind,” his mother says, “but he has no life there.” Aged care manages decline not growth. For young people, it means social isolation, loss of independence, declining mental health, and stalled education, work, and relationships. This is not an act of neglect by individuals it’s a structural failure of Australia’s disability, housing, and health systems.

Where Progress Is Working

Despite the slow pace, there are glimpses of change. Community housing partnerships between SDA providers and not-for-profits are producing high-quality, accessible homes in regional and outer-metro areas. Hospital-to-home programs in Victoria and NSW now connect patients with housing navigators before discharge. Lived experience advisory panels are influencing housing design and policy frameworks, ensuring people with disability lead the conversation. When systems coordinate and lived experience guides reform, results follow.

Why Progress Is Still Too Slow

While the numbers have improved from around 6,000 younger residents in aged care in 2018 to just over 1,100 today progress remains uneven. The government celebrates “near zero,” but for the thousand people left behind, “near” isn’t good enough. Several root causes remain unresolved: limited SDA development outside capital cities, lack of joined-up data between health, disability, and housing agencies, insufficient investment in advocacy services, and short-term policy cycles that ignore long-term housing demand.

What Needs to Happen Next

  1. Legislate transition timeframes limiting how long someone can stay in aged care while awaiting housing.
  2. Expand regional SDA development with grants or tax incentives.
  3. Create fast-track NDIS pathways for hospital discharges and YPIRAC participants.
  4. Integrate data across departments to prevent placement gaps.
  5. Fund advocacy and navigation services like Summer Foundation and YoungCare Australia.
  6. Embed accountability through annual progress reports and independent oversight.

The Moral Imperative: A Right to Home and Dignity

This issue isn’t only about numbers or deadlines it’s about human dignity and rights. Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognises the right to live independently and be included in the community. Australia has the resources, policies, and evidence to end young-people-in-aged-care placements. What’s missing is sustained coordination and political will.

Conclusion: Turning Promises into Performance

Australia knows what must be done. The blueprint exists, funding exists, and countless advocates have shown solutions that work. The remaining 1,000 young Australians in aged care are not statistical leftovers they are proof of unfinished business. As 2025 approaches, the message must shift from promise to performance. Ending these placements is not a bureaucratic milestone; it’s a test of compassion, justice, and inclusion.

Call to Action

Support the organisations leading change: Summer Foundation, YoungCare Australia, and NDIS Housing Connect. Ask your local representatives what concrete steps they’re taking to meet the 2025 YPIRAC goal. Share these stories, raise awareness, and remind Australia that the fight for accessible housing and dignity is not charity it’s human rights. Because no young person should ever have to grow old in aged care.