workforce
The study’ s authors say a deeper understanding of the current care workforce is needed, especially given estimated increases in demand.
Negin sits down with Aged Care Insite to discuss the effects that insights into the migration patterns of care workers might have on workforce planning, the opportunities and challenges an increasingly diverse workforce presents, and how migration data can be used to improve care.
ACI: What were you able to gather about the migration patterns of the aged-care workforce? Where are many of our workers coming from? JN: We looked at aged-care workers by region of birth using Census data, which is obviously national data and is the whole population, plus or minus. What we clearly saw was a trend from 2006 to 2011, the last two censuses, of an increasing proportion of aged-care workers in Australia being born overseas. In 2006, 67 per cent of aged care workers were Australian born. In 2011, 62.6 per cent were. So the proportion of foreign-born aged care workers increased in that time period.
Looking at absolute numbers, there was an increase in aged-care workers from 131,000 to 178,000 during that time.
It’ s quite an important change in where the workforce is coming from. There has also been a significant increase in the number of aged-care workers coming from South-east Asia, South Asia, and, in particular, sub- Saharan Africa and parts of East Asia. We’ re assuming those trends are likely to continue. The reliance on foreign-born people in Australia to care for our older population is a trend we have to keep an eye on.
You’ ve said the growth in cultural diversity among aged-care workers is, potentially, of great value to the quality of care in Australia. What are some of the benefits of having an increasingly diverse workforce? An increasingly diverse workforce reflects the population of Australia. There’ s great strength in having aged-care workers who represent the large ageing Chinese population in Australia. Or South Asian population. Or Greek population. Or whatever it happens to be. Our workforce should be reflecting the diversity Australia has. [ That diversity ] is not, by any means, a problem. It’ s a reflection of the Australian population.
Also, there are different care patterns, practices and cultural values that some of these individuals [ may bring to light ]. Those would enrich care environments across the country.
What impact could this kind of information have on workforce planning and why is it important that we better understand how and why these carers arrive in Australia? The big thing is that the demand for agedcare workers is increasing rapidly. There are some estimates that it’ ll increase 200 – 300 per cent over the next decade or so. We’ re going to need people working in the agedcare setting. If we’ re already seeing trends of that workforce being increasingly foreign born, then we have to try to understand how the people are coming to Australia, and how we can either create a pathway for them – which doesn’ t currently exist – or find alternative ways to make sure we have the workforce we need.
In the aged-care sector, there is no pathway for individuals to come to Australia with a visa to be an aged-care worker. Because it’ s not considered skilled, you can’ t get a skilled visa like you could if you were a doctor or nurse or in some other areas of employment. The people who are coming to Australia and ending up as aged care workers are coming through a variety of other visa pathways. Whether they come as students, spouses, refugees [ or in various other capacities ], they end up in this sector.
That’ s working right now, obviously, but if the demand for aged-care workers is going to increase dramatically over the coming years, then perhaps that status quo is not going to be sufficient. That’ s a question for employers in the sector, as well as for Australian policymakers.
Other countries have used immigration policy to recruit carers. Should Australia look at what other countries are doing in this space and, perhaps, take on some of those ideas? Absolutely. There’ s always value in looking at what other countries are doing. Canada has had a pathway, until recently, for care workers to come, and [ eventually gain ] permanent residency. Other countries have used other models. So it’ s certainly something we should examine.
The Australian Government has proposed, in its Northern Australia strategy, a pathway for people who want to come from overseas to work in the aged-care sector in Northern Australia. There’ s already some recognition by the Australian Government that the sector is going to need, or potentially need, some additional immigration pathways to be viable.
How can stakeholders such as service providers use this kind of information to improve care, or when looking at their workforce? There are a couple elements to that. One is that they do need to look at their workforce, at its cultural skills, cultural competency, and how workers interact with clients. For example, if you have a clientele that is largely Australian born and culturally white Australian, then having a number of aged-care workers from a different cultural background might raise some positive and negative situations that people need to address. There’ s a responsibility for aged-care employers to skill up their workforce, and to acknowledge some of these situations, so that the quality of care is high.
There’ s also an opportunity – where aged-care clients are foreign born and have different cultural backgrounds – to try to align some of the aged-care workers with the clientele. If employers are finding it difficult to recruit the workforce they need, this report, Foreign-born Aged Care Workers in Australia: A growing trend, might be able to help them negotiate with government, to start conversations about immigration pathways and workforce needs.
What might we be seeing in the future, in terms of foreign-born aged-care workers in Australia? It’ s quite clear that the proportion of aged-care workers who are foreign born is increasing. Every suggestion from people I’ ve spoken to in this sector suggests that percentage is increasing. And the total number of aged-care workers, both Australian born and foreign born, increased by 36 per cent between 2006 and 2011.
That increase is massive over five years. Obviously, if that continues, a good chunk of that is going to be foreign born. What was interesting is that we saw a huge increase in the percentage coming from South Asia. From 2164 in 2006, to more than 9000 in 2011. That was an increase of 333 per cent. So there certainly has been a pathway from South Asia, Nepal and Sri Lanka, in particular, which suggests an interesting story there. That is something we’ re in the process of trying to examine in a little bit more detail, to try to figure out what’ s happening, in terms of that pathway. ■
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