industry & reform
One of my grandmothers spent the last
10 years or more of her life in residential
aged care in Queensland. So from a
young age, I was very much aware of
what residential aged care offered to
older people in the country, at least in
her situation.
And then further in my career, I more
recently worked for the Commonwealth
government in the department of health
where I worked in Indigenous health for
10 years, and then in aged care for over five
years. I worked on the Living Longer Living
Better taskforce, so I’ve been involved in
that team in developing those reforms and
working across the sector.
What do you see as some of the really
pressing issues for the aged care
workforce?
I don’t think it’s any surprise to people,
given there’s a royal commission in aged
care at the moment, that the workforce
in aged care has not always been able to
provide the care that people expect or
should be entitled to.
That is no criticism of aged care workers.
It is that the industry and government
needs to work together to support
workers to be better trained and have
clear career pathways and be remunerated
appropriately.
It’s no surprise that that’s the central
issue behind delivering the implementation
of the strategy. In the current climate with
COVID, I think it’s a really huge challenge,
and it’s something that certainly I have
never seen in my lifetime, and I don’t think
anyone in this country has.
This is a once in a lifetime pandemic for
us; a situation where I don’t think anyone
would have been able to do any better than
the workers have been.
How can a council that has been
actioned by the peak bodies and is part
funded by the government be able to
properly and independently advocate for
the workforce?
The council is independent, and I see
part of my role as being really clearly
independent. I’ve very much done some
‘speed dating’ with the whole industry in
the first four weeks in my role, and one
of my comments to all of the leaders in
the industry has been that I see myself
in the council as Switzerland – that
we hold a neutral role in all of this,
and our key objective is to deliver the
14 strategic actions of the strategy and
to work with industry. Not just providers,
but unions and the workforce entities,
definitely the consumer entities as well,
and other organisations that support
people who are in care to make sure that
we get the best for our workforce and
ultimately the best for all the people who
receive care.
I don’t see this as a politicised position
or a role for that. It is purely to ensure that
we actually implement the strategy as best
we can.
There are 14 strategic points that are
going to be the focus of your work. What
do you see as the most important to
improve or tackle first off?
There’s a couple of things that are already
well progressed. So there has been a
significant amount of work developing
the aged care workforce study to help the
council and the sector better understand
workforce needs and their own workforce
situation.
There’s also work on digital learning and
what that means for the sector and how
we can actually enhance that. And I think
there’s a real opportunity here with what
we’ve seen through the COVID response
in terms of online training becoming much
more acceptable. [The question is] how
do we actually digitalise the training and
ensure the safety of workers and the care
recipients?
The industry itself has been working
to drive the delivery of the voluntary
industry code of practice, which we
hope to see released in the next couple
of months. And I know that there has
been a lot of consultation already led
by LASA and Sean [Rooney] leading that
with the sector providers and consumer
groups.
I really want to push forward with how
we change the image of the sector and
make it a sector of choice. There are
opportunities with lots of people who
unfortunately have had a downturn in their
ability to work through tourism and travel
industries, for example, who would make
fantastic additions to the workforce in aged
care. There’s some great opportunities for
us here.
It’s going to be tough to be that
Switzerland and advocate for higher staff
pay when you’ve got the government
on one side and the peaks on the other
maybe not necessarily wanting that to go
up a drastic amount
That is an important part of the strategy.
It is incredibly important that the
councillors are able to work closely with
government and the industry and drive
a better outcome for remuneration for
workers. I think I can still do that ‘big
Switzerland’ because I can be true to the
intent of the strategy and walk that path
without becoming highly political in the
middle of it.
We’re seeing in Victoria people coming
to work while they’re symptomatic,
because workers in the sector can’t
afford to stay home. Do we need to have
a higher minimum wage for aged care
workers?
That’s a good question. And it’s not one
I have fully contemplated currently in my
role. I know that we need to look at their
remuneration differently. And it needs to
be something that everyone can live with,
but not least of all that workers feel they
are appropriately remunerated for the
roles that they play. And I think this is going
to be a really tough one to implement,
but it needs to have really good thinking
around it from some clear experts in
the field and from collaboration across
government and industry to come up
with the right solution. I want to drive that
through, but I don’t have the answer to it
right now.
When your time is finished, what would
success look like?
Success for me would be that we have
addressed all of the strategic actions
in the matter of care. There’s 60
recommendations under those actions,
so it’s sizable and it’s detailed in what
we need to deliver. The council is not
accountable for delivering all of them, but
is accountable for pushing to have them
all delivered.
Success for me would be that I have
brokered relationships that maybe
weren’t always as strong as they
could have been. And that we have
delivered successfully on the 14 strategic
actions and the recommendations
underneath them.
In my first three years I think it’ll be a
case of scratching the surface of some
of those actions in the sense that there’ll
always be work to continue on in many
of them. Success for me would be that
they are clearly having positive outcomes
for workers, and that we’ve got a more
robust workforce with more and better
trained workers, and that older Australians
are getting the care that they really want
and need. ■
agedcareinsite.com.au
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