news
Equal pay push
New Zealand aged care nurses
petition for pay parity.
Just under 14,000 New Zealanders
have signed a petition calling for an
end to the pay disparity between the
country’s registered nurses who work
in aged care and their counterparts in
public hospitals.
“Registered nurses who work in aged
care in New Zealand earn on average at
least $10,000 a year less than nurses who
work in public hospitals,” the petition read.
“That’s not because they are any less
skilled or important, but because of
years of underfunding of rest homes by
successive governments and undervaluing
of the care of older people.”
Set up by the New Zealand Aged Care
Association, the petition to Dr David
Clark, New Zealand’s Minister of Health,
is pushing to close that $10,000 gap for
each of the country’s 5,000-plus aged care
nurses.
The issue of pay disparity has been
consistently raised in Australia over the last
decade. In October last year, the assistant
secretary of the Australian Nursing and
Midwifery Federation’s Victorian branch,
Paul Gilbert, told the aged care royal
commission that while the state’s privatefor-profit
and not-for-profit aged care
nurses earned the same as public aged
care and public hospital nurses in the
1990s, a wage gap emerged between
the sectors following the introduction of
enterprise bargaining.
“Today, despite the injection of more
than $2 billion in federal government
funding to boost wages, a Victorian nurse
working in private-for-profit or not-forprofit
residential aged care earns about
19 per cent less than a nurse doing the
same work in a public aged care facility or
a public hospital,” Gilbert said.
In its push for better pay for the
country’s aged care nurses, the New
Zealand Aged Care Association said that
it was thanks to their skill and leadership
that the vast majority of the country’s
aged care homes saw zero COVID-19
cases.
And Katherine Ravenswood, an associate
professor in Employment Relations at
Auckland University of Technology, said
that staffing issues were likely to be a factor
for those that did.
Half of the country’s COVID-19 deaths
were residents from one rest home in
Christchurch, while three more cases were
at another in Auckland.
In an article written for The Conversation,
Ravenswood, who spoke at the Australian
Aged Care Royal Commission, said her
research suggests any inquiry into why
COVID-19 tore through some of the
country’s aged care homes and not others
needs to pay more attention to caregivers
and their concerns about lack of support
for quality aged care.
“It is time policymakers, funders and
aged care providers address the elephant
in the room: that quality care requires more
staff and more time,” she said. ■
Japan records rise in people with
dementia disappearing.
Gone missing
Over 17,000 people with dementia went missing in
Japan last year and 245 of those people were never
found.
Data released by the National Police Agency shows that in
2019 a total of 17,479 people with dementia, or with suspected
dementia, went missing, the highest figure since data began
in 2012.
Japan has a population of over 126 million people and the
largest population of over 65’s in the world. Over 20 per cent
of Japan’s population is over 65 years old, and by 2030, one in
every three people will be 65 or older.
The 2019 figures were up 552 from 2018 and 80 per cent
higher than in 2012. 71.7 per cent were found the same day
their disappearance was reported, according to Japan Today.
99 per cent were found within a week, while four people were
found more than two years after they went missing.
The overall number of people who went missing last year,
including those not suffering from dementia, reached 86,933.
Among missing people aged 70 or older, dementia was the largest
cause of their disappearance.
Like Australia, Japan is in the midst of a dementia crisis
that is expected to worsen in the near future. Approximately
4.6 million people are suffering from some form of dementia in
Japan, with the total expected to soar to about 7.3 million people
by 2025. ■
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agedcareinsite.com.au