workforce
Self-determination
Aged Care Workforce Industry Council CEO discusses new Voluntary Industry Code of Practice .
Louise O ’ Neill interviewed by Conor Burke
The Aged Care Workforce Industry
Council recently launched the Voluntary Industry Code of Practice with aged care services minister Richard Colbeck lauding it as a “ transformative tool ” for the sector .
The Council is responsible for overarching administration , governance and monitoring of industry commitment and accountability to the Code . Signatories will need to be able to demonstrate how they live up to the principles by June 30 2021 .
Louise O ’ Neill , chief executive of the Aged Care Workforce Industry Council , joined Aged Care Insite to talk more about the code .
ACI : Run us through the history of this document . LO : The Voluntary Industry Code of Practice was developed as part of the Aged Care Workforce Strategy , A Matter of Care , which was published in 2018 . Upon the Council ’ s establishment in May of 2019 , the Council was tasked with implementing the Voluntary Industry Code of Practice with aged care providers and workers and consumers . And during 2019 , the Council sought the assistance of LASA in socialising and redrafting the code with consumers , workers and providers . The Council with LASA ’ s assistance modified the 2018 code to better reflect the current sentiment . And that was published on our website in October of 2020 .
Now the real work begins . We start our consultations to shape the code through its governance monitoring and implementation processes with the sector .
Some of our directors from the council board will come out with me and speak to people and understand how they feel about the code and how we best can help them to commit to it and support people in their implementation .
What will government give to providers to make this work ? It gives providers the opportunity to self-regulate , in an industry that ’ s heavily regulated . They will be able to share best practise and innovation and practical solutions to solve problems and build a benchmark for providers and services where they can measure against one another and the industry baseline . That will drive ultimately quality improvement because no one wants to be providing services that aren ’ t the same quality as their neighbour .
So they ’ ll use that information that ’ s publicly available through publishing their commitments to the code and then they ’ re reporting against that each year , which is what our intention would be .
And we know that benchmarking is a powerful tool within any industry . So , where its industry self-led and not pushed by other organisations , or by government or regulation , then it ’ s much more powerful .
This code makes a real point of saying that it ’ s voluntary . It ’ s something we should expect people to do already , right ? The issue of whether it ’ s voluntary or compulsory , I think , is sort of moot in a way because the power in this is that providers themselves see the value in what they can do by committing to this .
This enables people to be really transparent with their consumers and their workers around how they intend to perform against those seven principles each year and where they ’ re going to drive more improvements .
We ’ ve now got I think 45 providers that have signed up , pledging to the code . And we have another 40 or 50 people and organisations that have written in statements of support to it as well .
What kind of things will you be talking about in the industry roundtables ? We will discuss with the sector how they would see the monitoring and the reporting on the code and their implementation of it , how they take it up and to make sure that we harmonise that with the expectation of consumers and workers as well .
It doesn ’ t come with that same carrot and stick that regulation comes with , but it does raise the question around how do consumers or workers make complaints about the industry , if they were to find that a provider wasn ’ t meeting what they thought they were expected to meet under the principles of the code .
The whole point is , if you ’ re not actually doing it well , how do we help you to get there ? It ’ s industry helping to drive greater quality , better outcomes , safer services , stronger staff .
Was there any thoughts about holding off a couple of months until the final report from the Royal Commission came down ? Look , I don ’ t think that the code will be any different from what the Commission would expect , because it expects better quality and it expects better outcomes for consumers and support for workforce and strong governance and leadership in the sector .
How will you measure the success of the code ? In my view , success will be that you will see less sanctions coming out of the Quality and Safety Commission because the sector will be working amongst themselves to improve and support each other , to not get to that point . ■ agedcareinsite . com . au 27