VET disability workers over the next three to five years, and I don’ t know where they’ re going to come from because our unemployment rate is so low.
“ Even the number of long-term unemployed isn’ t enough; even if we got every one of them into a job there’ s not enough to go around.”
It’ s a VET issue The workforce shortage is more a VET issue than a higher education one, Cooke says.
“ At the moment, in the health and care workforce, there are about 1.3 million people and about two-thirds of those do not have a degree and never will; they are the assistant workforce, or the VET workforce. This is the area that we’ re interested in and we work in. Yet at the moment, all the national initiatives are about pumping up the number of doctors and nurses.”
Cooke is concerned that there are high levels of funding for doctors while most of the work is done by people without degrees.
“ The touch point of carers in Australia is not the degreed professions, it’ s the aged-care workers, the child-care workers, the disability workers,” he explains.“ They’ re the ones the population of Australia deals with on a day-to-day basis, yet all our [ policy ] focus and all our funding is on the degreed professionals.
“ If it wasn’ t for the assistant care workforce, our country would grind to a halt. If you can ' t get childcare, if you can ' t have somebody to look after your aged parents, if you can ' t have somebody to look after a disabled sibling, you can ' t work. And so we need to look at how we’ re going to provide that workforce and that care. It will not be provided by a degreed professional; it will be done by a VET worker.”
Cooke is passionate about the need for a dramatic increase in the volume of VET programs for carers, yet governments are making cuts to the sector.
“ When we talk about needing 800,000 more aged-care workers and 125,000 disability workers … We need to double our national training capacity to have any hope of meeting those numbers of trained people. We train about 20,000 aged-care workers a year, but we need to train 40,000 people a year from now, today, for the next 20 years, to meet our 800,000-worker target.”
At the same time that we need more VET students“ our federal and state governments are dismantling the vocational education and training infrastructure. It is going to higher education via Bradley and into the schools via Gonski. Clearly, VET is not just being starved, it’ s being dismantled
We need a national campaign to say to people,‘ This is a great industry, come and work here.’ It’ s not just that there’ s a job for you in aged care or disability; we’ re talking about a wide range of jobs and professions and careers that people can enter and then move around in.
because each state government is cutting the cost of VET and the TAFEs seem to be bearing the brunt of it.”
Cooke suggests that the reduction in TAFE infrastructure, particularly in regional areas, runs counter to the national need for increased training of care workers.
“ Often TAFEs are the only ones that go into regional areas with thin markets,” he explains.“ Often they’ re the only ones with the infrastructure – the staff, facilities and equipment – to be able to deliver high-quality training and numbers and high-volume numbers.”
Cooke says the nation“ cannot wait for a couple of years to think about it [ because by that time perhaps TAFEs will have sold off ] a lot of their facilities. How do we make sure that they’ re still there and they’ re delivering [ the training required ]?”
Promoting attractive careers Instead of making cuts to VET, Cooke recommends a national promotional campaign to attract more people to undertake VET programs that lead to new jobs and satisfying careers.
“ We need to have a national recruitment campaign that points out the value of this sector. We need a national campaign to say to people,‘ This is a great industry, come and work here.’ It’ s not just that there’ s a job for you in aged care or disability; we’ re talking about a wide range of jobs and professions and careers that people can enter and then move around in.”
Cooke wants the national campaign not just to attract sufficient numbers, he wants it to draw high-quality entrants.
“ We need to make sure we get great people entering the profession because you and I at some point are going to be needing aged care, so I want to make sure there are great people there, as everybody does,” he says.“ If you’ re a parent, you want to have terrific people working in the local child care, and if you’ ve got a disability you want great carers to provide the support that you need, so we need to make sure we get our share of the best and brightest to come in.”
He believes it is possible to promote this positive image of the industry and change its public image:“ If you want to change public opinion, as was done [ by the mining industry ] with the mining tax and by the clubs and hotels around gambling, you pump $ 20 million or $ 30 million into a national promotional campaign. I think that’ s the federal government’ s responsibility to fill that gap and to develop, maintain and promote the campaign.”
To offer more training that is attractive to trainees and meets the needs of employers, Cooke says, providers will need to be much more proactive.
“ We see a different model of approach for registered training organisations [ RTOs ]. I don’ t think it is acceptable now or in the future that the providers just provide training; they need to work with employers to find out what those employers need. A local employer will want different things from his workforce, so an RTO will need to work with them to tailor the content of a qualification or training to more closely meet the employer’ s needs.
“ RTOs need to almost become business consultants. That’ s a message I’ ve sent to RTOs in many forums: I’ ve said,‘ You need to work with the employer, you need to help hem understand their strategy, you need to help them with a workforce development plan, and you need to tailor the training to work in with what the employer wants and needs.’ There must be more creative approaches by RTOs for how they deliver the numbers [ of trained workers ].”
He repeats that the escalating cost of health and care based on the reactive, not preventative, model and the lack of skilled carers are issues worthy of prime attention in the forthcoming federal election, but the media and politicians are not prioritising this industry’ s needs.
“ We think it is an election issue but the elected officials haven’ t woken up to the fact. Both major parties are focused on issues that in the scheme of things aren’ t as pervasive as health and care. It just does not seem to be the election issue and I’ m intrigued why, because in 20 years’ time all the state government budgets are going to be spent on health and care.
“ It is a crisis that we know about now, but nobody’ s doing anything.”
www. cshisc. com. au / media / 184810 / CS _ HISC _ Position _ on _ industry _ FAQs. pdf
Dr John Mitchell’ s company measures workforce capabilities. Go to www. jmaanalytics. com. au
www. campusreview. com. au Issue 8 2013 | 33