Last week, Ageing Australia published a piece on pet-friendly aged care (p.38). According to the published survey, 96% of Australians believe aged care residents should be able to keep their pets, and 86% describe pets in aged care as "vitally important." Yet only around 18% of residential aged care homes allow it.

Beyond my work, I understand this on a personal level. When I migrated to Australia from Greece, I brought my cat Sophie with me. It was quite expensive, and her visa application was way more complicated than mine. But there was never a question about whether she was coming. Sophie was family. The idea of leaving her behind, or of being told I couldn't bring her, would have been devastating.

Companion animals are an essential part of maintaining physical and mental wellbeing for people of all ages. Residential aged care homes that welcome pets consistently report happier residents and greater community engagement. The new Aged Care Act emphasises dignity, meaningful relationships, and person-centred care — for the 73% of Australian households that have a pet, those principles include the animal at the foot of the bed.

And the case isn't only ethical. Providers who embrace pet-friendly policies are seeing the results in resident satisfaction, family trust, and reputation, so it can also translate to good business.

Researchers at a Canadian university recruited 296 first-year students — people in the middle of a major life transition, navigating unfamiliar surroundings, separated from their usual support networks — and randomly assigned them to one of three groups for two weeks.

One group texted daily with a custom-built AI chatbot called Sam, designed using principles from relationship science to be empathetic, validating, and consistently supportive. Another group was paired with a randomly selected fellow first-year student they'd never met. A third group simply wrote one sentence about their day.

After two weeks, only the students who texted with a random human peer showed a measurable reduction in loneliness. On the contrary, the chatbot group and the people who journaled showed no measurable change.

This is an interesting finding. The chatbot was purpose-built to be the ideal conversational partner. It expressed higher levels of empathy than the human participants did. It was always available, never distracted, never tired, never judgmental. Yet, it made no difference to loneliness.

The researchers offer several explanations. One is that a message from a person who chose to respond (e.g. a fellow student who could have done something else) carries emotional weight that an always-available chatbot cannot replicate. This shows that connection is more than receiving support. It's about knowing someone chooses to give it.

The study also tracked what happened after the two weeks ended. 33% of the human-paired participants voluntarily kept chatting. Only 14% continued with the chatbot. And 37% of the human pairs exchanged contact information, the beginning of an actual relationship.

As Joseph Weizenbaum, the MIT scientist who created the first chatbot in the 1960s, put it: "Love and loneliness have to do with the deepest consequences of our biological constitution. That kind of understanding is in principle impossible for the computer."

The full study is available on Science Direct.

21–22 April | Marvel Stadium, Melbourne & online

Over two days, the sessions cover what the first phase of the Support at Home rollout has taught us — what's working, what needs to change, and where the gaps in funding, guidance, systems, workforce, and accountability are showing up.

For senior staff, it's a chance to step above the day-to-day noise and discuss strategic priorities: what to fund, what to stop, and how to lead teams through the next phase. For operational managers and frontline leaders, it's about practical planning, processes that work, clearer decisions, tested ideas already delivering results in services.

I'll be part of a panel on technology and systems, one of the five conference themes, alongside workforce, financial sustainability, and compliance.

23 April | 12–1pm AEST | Online | Free | Hosted by Anglicare Sydney

I'm presenting this session aimed at both individuals figuring out how AI fits into their own work and organisations working through how to adopt it responsibly. I'll cover where AI is now, where it's heading, and how to take practical next steps, with an honest conversation about what works, what doesn't, and how to move forward with confidence. There'll be time for questions.

6–7 May | Royal International Convention Centre, Brisbane

I'll be part of the closing session — a fishbowl-style panel called "Aged Care 2076: Wild Predictions and Bold Ideas" with Sanka Amadoru (Geriatrician, Aria Health) and Dan Aitchison (CEO, Palm Lake Care). We're throwing out the rulebook and jumping 50 years into the future to imagine what aged care in Australia could look like in 2076. Expect provocation, energy, and a few ideas that will either inspire you or make you nervous.

As I’m sure you know, the federal government halved the fuel excise on 1 April and until 30 June, as petrol prices surged past $2.50 a litre amid the US-Iran conflict. However, classifying aged care workers as priority fuel users still hasn't happened.

The Health Services Union (HSU) explained the problem a few days ago: Aged care workers can't work from home. They drive to facilities, to clients' homes, to multiple sites in a single shift. Casual workers are now reconsidering whether a shift is worth the petrol. The HSU is calling for free parking at aged care facilities and flexibility for staff who need to use public transport.

This is not new, and it has nothing to do with aged care, but I stumbled upon it again after a few years and thought I’d share it as it has everything to do with how we form opinions about anything.

We Become What We Behold is a short interactive game by Nicky Case. You play as a camera operator capturing moments in a crowd. The game shows how the moments we choose to focus on — especially the negative, the unusual, the conflict-laden — shape behaviour over time. Attention drives narrative, narrative drives action, action confirms the narrative. It's a feedback loop, and by the end you'll recognise it from every news cycle you've lived through. Play it in a browser. It takes five minutes and it stays with you.

I had no idea about this until I read a study covered by ScienceDaily last week. A large US analysis found that salt substitutes — where part of the sodium chloride is replaced with potassium chloride — may offer a simple, low-cost way to reduce sodium intake, manage hypertension, and improve blood pressure. The evidence looks promising, but uptake is almost non-existent, even among people who would benefit most.

Why can't we just use ChatGPT for everything? This is the second clip from last week's expert panel. Peter Kokinakos from Innovation Philosophy and George Margelis from Ageing Australia explain why public AI tools aren't designed for sensitive healthcare data and contrast that with purpose-built solutions that keep data inside the firewall with proper access controls.

On the same note, Innovation Philosophy is currently offering an AI Readiness Assessment at no cost for aged care providers. This is a short, working session where they review your current systems, workflows, and priorities to identify where AI can be introduced safely and effectively, without creating compliance risk.

ARIIA has a growing range of short courses designed to build capability across the sector. They're developed with industry experts and designed for the realities of aged care work. Current courses include Retaining your Aged Care Workforce, About Aged Care in Australia, and Critical Thinking in Aged Care: Acting on What You Notice, with a digital basics course coming soon. Flexible, blended learning options for individuals and teams.

You can take a photo of almost any document and have ChatGPT pull the information out as clean, structured text. Here's how.

What you need: ChatGPT (free or paid) on your phone or desktop.

Three ways to use this week: Photograph a completed paper form and convert it to a digital record you can paste into your system. Snap a whiteboard after a planning session and turn it into a formatted summary with action items. Upload a photo of handwritten notes and get an editable text version in seconds.

Each week, I review developments in ageing and aged care and what they mean in practice. If this was useful, forward it to someone in the sector who'd appreciate it.

George Gouzounis