Building aged care workforce for Australia’s future
An Aged Care Workforce Development Strategy must be a priority of the federal government if Australia is to have an aged care workforce to meet the demand of a growing number of older people.
Aged & Community Services Australia CEO, Adjunct Professor John Kelly, claims providers are already having difficulty filling vacancies, especially in rural and regional locations.
In its position paper The Aged Care Workforce in Australia, Aged & Community Services Australia (ACSA) calls for a specific Budget allocation for sector wide leadership development; national and regional staffing projections, including the contribution made by support and administrative staff, based on population data.
ACSA also calls for the impact of emerging models of care on work patterns and the diversity of work roles; action plans for improving attraction, recruitment and retention in aged care; and key partnerships and initiatives for building a skilled, modern and diverse age care workforce.
Adjunct Professor John Kelly, ACSA chief executive, says the aged care workforce is older than the overall Australian workforce, and is gender biased with an 89% female workforce in residential care and more than 90% in community care. Positively, it is a rich and diverse multicultural workforce.
“With Australia's older population growing in number and age, there is a 2.5% projected growth of aged care workers every year until 2050, but providers are already having difficulty filling vacancies, especially in rural and regional locations,” Adjunct Professor Kelly says.
“The current aged care reforms with its requirement to provide all home care packages on a consumer directed care (CDC) basis from July 2015 mean that the challenge of developing the future aged care workforce is not simply about finding more workers but finding new staffing models and ways of delivering services,” he says.
Based on the projections for service growth to 2023, it is estimated that there will need to be an additional 55,770 FTE care workers (37,620 in residential aged care and 18,150 in community aged care) over the decade from 2013 to 2023.
“Given the significance of ageing and aged care spending in the federal Budget, it is crucial that government and industry work together to ensure that Australia retains a flexible, responsive, high quality and sustainable aged care system,” he says.
