The age discrimination commissioner has said the deployment of police officers to respond to incidents in aged care homes should be reviewed after the Tasering of 95-year-old Claire Nowland.
Nowland, who weighs 43kg and lives with dementia, was Tasered by police after she was found armed with a steak knife in her home at an aged care facility in Cooma. She is in end-of-life care at Cooma district hospital after the incident caused her to fall and sustain life-threatening head injuries.
The commissioner, Dr Kay Patterson, said the incident was appalling and there should be a review into whether a mental health team would be more appropriate.
She said sending a mental health team had proven a better outcome over sending police where there were incidents of domestic violence or if someone with a mental illness had “done something wrong”.
“People in aged care become very aggressive and it’s a mental illness,” she said on Wednesday. “They’re not responsible sometimes for their behaviour, and I think that we need to revisit whether it’s appropriate to have police responding to those sorts of incidences.”
The Greens senator for New South Wales David Shoebridge put questions to Patterson in parliament on Wednesday.
He said police in NSW were responding to call-outs related to incidents in aged care “dozens of times a week” following a mandatory reporting recommendation by the aged care royal commission to notify police when an incident of violence or assault occurs in an aged care home.
“When you call in the police and the tools they have are a baton, handcuffs, Tasers, and a gun, you’re asking for the wrong resource to go [to] when you’ve got a frail woman with dementia,” he said.
Patterson said this concern had not been raised with the commission, but agreed the recommendation should be reviewed.
“I think any recommendation is worth having a look at again; it’s not written [in] stone or blood,” she said. “As a psychologist, I think a different team … could handle it differently or a police team trained.”
“Anybody who says ‘it’s not exactly what the royal commission said’ – I think what we’ve got to look for is: what’s the best answer?”
Asked about Patterson’s comments on police involvement in aged care incidents, the health minister, Mark Butler, said he was “deeply distressed” by what happened to Nowland.
“I do hope in time we are able to have a mature, informed conversation about the way in which people with dementia – as we’ve had about people experiencing mental illness – are responded to,” he said.
“We need to make sure the response is sensitive to the conditions many aged care residents live in, which is substantial cognitive impairment through dementia.”
The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, has ordered a review of police training, particularly focused on how to deal with people with dementia.
“The role of a police officer seems to be growing wider and wider, and we are expected to know everything about everything – and we are not experts on everything,” she said.
It comes as pressure builds on NSW police to release the officer’s bodycam footage of the incident, and for the NSW government to conduct a parliamentary inquiry into police powers and police responses when dealing with vulnerable people.
On Tuesday, the Greens MP and spokesperson for justice, Sue Higginson introduced a notice of motion calling for such measures, including an independent investigation into the incident.
The NSW member for Kiama, Gareth Ward, is also calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the incident, which the NSW opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said on Tuesday the Coalition would back.
