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These people are speaking out about what it's like to work in aged care across Australia.

Some are risking their jobs by talking.

These are their stories, in their words.

Maggie Bain

Retired diversional therapist

"I'm speaking for the residents without a voice, the families without a voice, and staff without a voice."

Maggie Bain. ( ABC News: Ron Foley )

I've worked with the best and I've worked with the worst. The comparison is just 100 per cent different.

I've come across people that have suicided in aged care because of depression and it's a big, big thing.

I've seen an elderly gentleman be moved from his room in a low care area because the facility wanted that room and he was moved to high care dementia. He used to ask us "Am I in the madhouse, doll? Am I in the madhouse, love?" He was a lovely gentleman. He was cognitive. We all used to have conversations with him. Within about 10 weeks, he had curled up from depression and died.

He didn't have family to stand up for him.

I saw the food that was served... just junk food really. Bread, maybe some butter, little saveloys, fish fingers, chippies and things like that. These people are at risk of catching infections if they don't have a decent diet.

My wage was like $25 an hour. I think my young granddaughter was making more than that at Safeway working over the weekend. Aged care wages are very minimal and it doesn't really depend on your training.

Tony Northcote

Aged care consultant with 12 years' experience

"These people, they're all someone's mum, someone's dad, someone's brother, someone's sister and they're just forgotten there."

Tony Northcote. ( ABC News: Ron Foley )

It's regular, if you're on a night shift as a registered nurse, to be in charge of 100, 120, 150 people.

There's a lot of nursing practices that you witness that you wouldn't like to have for your mum or your dad. Morning rounds where staff coming in, turning all the lights on and just ripping the sheets back without telling you what they're doing, and fighting with people that are obviously confused.

My mind goes back to a place that I did a temporary assignment at... I found that over 60 per cent of their bed-bound residents had forms of pressure injuries. 90 per cent of the residents that are incontinent had rashes. Their rate of skin tears was high.

Wounds that started off as simple skin tears had deteriorated into massive ulcers.

We're increasingly seeing the workforce made up of people that are unqualified, that often had problems with English and a very important part of dealing with the older people - especially those with dementia - is being able to communicate effectively. We need to do a lot better.

Katrina Legzdins

Enrolled nurse

"I'm speaking out because I became frustrated with the poor conditions working in aged care."

Katrina Legszdins. ( ABC News: Ron Foley )

Some people get really depressed and you have a resident saying, "Can you give me a pill to kill me?"

They just want to die and you don't have five minutes to spend sitting there with them. We were told not to tell the residents if we were short staffed, which is really common, because they'd find that distressing.

We had an incident where one of the residents had a chronic skin ulcer on his head that hadn't been dressed and was found to have maggots in it because it had been left exposed. We were told not to tell the family.

There's no ratio for number of staff to residents, so they can just get away with bare bones, bare minimum. The workload is just so intense. There was myself and a registered nurse in charge of 72 residents. You walk out of there knowing that the residents deserve better than what you can give them. There was just the sheer number of people that you have to look after.

I've been to management to complain about the workload, that it's not possible, and was basically told it was my poor time management.

Rebecca De Haan

Personal carer with 10 years' experience

"It's the people who don't have the family or friends that get the worst care because there's no scrutiny."

Rebecca De Haan. ( ABC News: Ron Foley )

Every facility I worked at really felt like they were understaffed.

What will often happen when staff are under pressure is they might not shower residents, they might just wash them or they might not even wash them. Sometimes they might just change the clothes, spray them with deodorant and then just write that they've had a shower. It's easy to get away with that for the residents who won't remember or who don't have family coming in.

Often people with dementia especially if they've been put in a home that they're not familiar with do get agitated, that's just what happens. They might be calling out, they might be someone that can't walk but is trying to walk and as a result, to calm people down, medication was often given.

There was once a woman, she fell and broke her hip and then she was bedridden. And then they didn't turn her properly when she was bedridden, so she got awful pressure sores all down her back and her legs. It was horrible, just awful. She passed away far too early.

There were residents that didn't get fed.

I was working in a facility where they were always short staffed. As a result, there were residents that didn't get fed. There were people that were in bed that needed to be fully fed, they couldn't feed themselves at all, and you'd see staff members just quickly going to offer the resident a bit of food. If they didn't take it immediately, [the staff would] just go out and ditch the lunch. And that was really common. You can see these people are so hungry.

Troy Mann

Personal carer who worked in aged care for nine months

"I suffered a mental breakdown because of it. I put myself in the residents' shoes. I thought to myself: 'Would I be happy in their position?'"

Troy Mann. ( ABC News: Ron Foley )

Working night shift, one of my first duties on night shift was to go in and take the box of incontinence pads and distribute them through the wing.

I had to many times ask a registered nurse on night shift whether I could have access to the storeroom to grab maybe one or two to get me through the night. Quite often I was told, "No."

Some of [the residents] were drop-offs.

Their families put them in the nursing home and that's the last they've seen of their family. So the care staff become like family. But when the care staff either don't care, or can't do their jobs adequately, you can't sit there and comfort somebody for half an hour as much as you'd like to, because you've got other residents to attend to.

Melanie Whiteley

Personal care assistant

"I'm doing this interview because I believe that the truth about aged care needs to come out."

Melanie Whiteley. ( ABC News: Ron Foley )

Sometimes it was just little things... We didn't have the resources to give everyone that needed [one] a heat pack.

We were required to fill out on the paperwork that we were providing these things, but in actual fact we didn't even have the right amount.

Residents used to say to me personally, "We can see you're busy, come back to us when you can."

They can see that you've got so many things to do and you're trying to get everything done. Then they feel bad that they're having to take up a bit of your time. That's what they're paying for.

There were some residents that wanted their showers at specific times, so a lot of us ensured that we went to those residents at those specific times. The other residents could see that we were so strapped for time some days that they would say, "Oh, don't worry about me, I'll just have a shower tomorrow."

But you knew that if you weren't on, that resident wouldn't get a shower tomorrow.

Tanya Bosch

Personal Care assistant

"It was the most exhausting, confronting, distressing job I've ever had."

Tanya Bosch. ( ABC News: Ron Foley )

It was really frustrating to know that on a daily basis, you were failing to meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

There were a lot of elements of care that got missed because we were so time poor. Things like nail care, mouth care, emotional support for residents. I remember being told that we could only use three continence pads for any resident on any day.

The afternoon shift started at 3pm to 3.30pm. We'd start at one end of the corridor and we'd start getting people into their pyjamas, whether they liked it or not and while some of the residents had dementia and probably wouldn't have known if it was day time or night time, a good 50 per cent of them knew full well that it was still the middle of the afternoon.

I had people begging me to stay next to the bed for a little bit longer.

"Please don't go yet, don't go yet." And it's just heartbreaking to have to walk away from someone who just wants a little bit of kindness and a little bit of a chat. The emotional needs of residents were so far down the list of priorities.

These stories are some of thousands we received from our audience as part of a special ABC investigation into aged care in Australia.

You can watch Part One of this investigation tonight on Four Corners at 8.30pm on ABC TV, ABC iview and Facebook. Part Two airs on September 24th.

Do you know more about aged care? Email aged.care@abc.net.au.