Industry insights on skills needs
The Direct Client Care and Support IRC's 2019 Skills Forecast identifies the top priority skills for the sector as mainly soft skills, ranging from emotional intelligence, teamwork and communication, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility, through to problem solving and self-management, followed by technical / job specific skills. The top five identified generic skills are:
- Communication / Virtual collaboration / Social intelligence
- Customer Service / Marketing
- Learning agility / Information literacy / Intellectual autonomy and self management (adaptability)
- Language, Literacy and Numeracy (LLN) (Foundation skills)
- Design mindset / Thinking critically / System thinking / Solving problems.
According to the job vacancy data, the top requested skills by employers in the sector were communication skills and planning. The top employers were the New South Wales Government and the Government of Victoria.
The Direct Client Care and Support IRC's 2019 Skills Forecast highlights several key challenges and opportunities for the sector, including:
- Skill shortages – needed to help those with chronic health conditions, and in the areas of dementia care and palliative care, as well a need for workers with technological and interpersonal skills
- Government policy / legislation changes – relating to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and government expenditure in the Aged Care sector
- An ageing workforce
- A lack of career progression, a lack of career pathways and an increased casualisation of the workforce.
The sector’s client base has changed over time, as the prevalence of mental health and alcohol and other drug-related conditions, as well as other chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, obesity and arthritis, increases. In addition to increased demand for skills relating to the care of individuals with chronic health conditions and alcohol and other drugs, there are also deficiencies in skills related to dementia care, palliative care, technological and interpersonal skills (such as communication), most noticeably in the aged and disability care sectors. A focus on updating the workforce skills mix is therefore of high priority. However, there are a multitude of challenges influencing skills shortages across all direct client care and support workforces, such as:
- A scarce supply of skilled trainers
- A lack of investment in workplace training, compounded by funding limitations
- Limited opportunities for continual training (e.g. continued professional development)
- No formal requirement for aged care-related training before entering the aged care workforce, and the onboarding of unqualified staff
- A disassociation between components of training and industry needs (e.g. skills areas such as technology, communication, customer service, negotiation, risk assessment skills, etc.)
- Poor language, literacy and numeracy (LLN) skills
- The high cost of training to both workers and employers, especially where there are no subsidised training places to meet particular sector demands.
Locality is also an issue, which can be compounded by greater need for aged care services as older people in rural and remote areas have lower incomes, experience greater levels of disability, and reside in poorer quality housing. Further, there are higher proportions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in rural and remote areas. However, the use of aged care places is much lower outside major cities and people living outside major cities often wait considerably longer to move into residential high care even after being approved a place. Authors of Addressing Aged Care Workforce Issues in Rural and Remote Australia state the contributing factor to this inequity in access is workforce shortages and the absence of a national strategy is a critical aspect impeding a strategic approach to recruitment and retention in rural and remote areas. Recommendations are provided relating to the age care workforce generally, the rural and remote setting more specifically, and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, which have their own unique circumstances and needs.
Findings in Exploring Aboriginal Aged Care Residents’ Cultural and Spiritual Needs in South Australia suggest that carers and residents believe cultural inclusion in general care practices may enrich Aboriginal residents’ daily life, health and well-being in residential aged care facilities. However, Profiling Capacity to Support Older People in Remote Communities to Age in Place, finds that hands on Indigenous care workers, especially women, are squeezed between their employment in health care training and service delivery, and their more traditional roles and cultural responsibilities. Hence, there is a high turnover of people through these service positions.
Many of the matters raised above may also be examined in the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety’s final report, which must be finalised by the end of February 2021.
According to the Direct Client Care and Support IRC's 2019 Skills Forecast many of the opportunities and challenges relating government policy/legislation changes are associated with the NDIS and aged care.
The NDIS provides an individualised approach to funding and connecting individuals who have a permanent and significant disability to services that will support them in their daily lives and help them to achieve their goals. A challenge to the implementation of NDIS is an insufficient number of staff employed to create NDIS plans (i.e. individualised care plans), which is a critical component of the Scheme. Significant labour shortages in this area have resulted in employers hiring people regardless of their level of skills and experience.
Despite additional recruitment of staff external to the public sector workforce, the volume of demand has resulted in a pressurised process and, as a result, a significant number of NDIS plans are unsatisfactory, in that they are not reflective of clients' wishes or situations. Specialised skills are required for conducting assessments in order to understand the complexity of clients' needs, and in order to put together NDIS plans that best meet their requirements. With a certain portion of NDIS plans not catering to the full breadth of client concerns, it is possible the disability support workforce may face flow-on difficulties in providing holistic care to clients.
Furthermore, the new workforce in NDIS-funded services provision results in even greater workload and work intensity for experienced staff, who are required to support and compensate for the limited capacities of newer workers according to Precarity and Job Instability on the Frontlines of NDIS Support Work. The authors’ find the NDIS does not provide adequate funds within the unit price structure for regular training of staff. Hence, in most agencies, training opportunities for newly hired staff range from minimal to non-existent. The authors state that the departure of many long-time, more experienced workers will only exacerbate the problems of skill and capacity faced under the NDIS.
Issues around pricing are also raised in State of the Disability Sector Report 2019, along with sustainability, regulations among other challenges, and in Regional Australia Institute’s review of key policy approaches in Building the NDIS in Regional Australia: a Review of Key Policy Approaches.
The Australian Government’s strategy, Growing the NDIS Market and Workforce: Supporting the Market to Deliver Innovative, People-Centred Services so that Participants can Achieve Their Goals, outlines its key priorities to help an efficient and effective NDIS market. The Government is also working with state and territory governments to support the development of the NDIS market and workforce. For example, education and skills services are being refined to improve formal qualifications and training pathways for current and potential NDIS workers. Recently published state and territory NDIS workforce insight reports and plans include: Disability Workforce Insights by the South Australian Training and Skills Commission; Keeping our Sector Strong: Victoria’s Workforce Plan for the NDIS; and Queensland’s suite of work NDIS Training and Skills Support Strategy. The Australian Parliament is also examining the NDIS workforce, through an inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. A total of 52 submissions are publicly available and a report will be published in due course.
To support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment across the sector, the National Disability Service has released Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Guide and Toolkit.
Specific occupations within the Direct Client Care and Support sector have also released workforce plans and assessments such as: Western Australia’s Social Assistance and Allied Health Workforce Strategy; Northern Territory PHN Primary Health care Workforce Needs Assessment: Year 2: Allied Primary Health Workforce; Strategy for the Family Carer Mental Health Workforce in Victoria; Northern Territory’s 2018-2019 Mental Health Peer Support Workforce Assessment Needs; Tasmania’s Peer Workforce Development Strategy; and Victoria's Alcohol and Other Drugs Workforce Strategy 2018–2022.
Navigating the Maze: An Overview of Australia's Current Aged Care System reiterates longstanding concerns around workforce numbers and skills mix, attraction, retention and career paths, remuneration, and the levels of skills and qualifications in the sector. The aged care workforce will need to expand considerably, to around 980,000 by 2050 according to the Productivity Commission, as the population ages and adopt new models of care and scopes of practice to meet changing expectations across Australia.
As such, A Matter of Care: Australia's Aged Care Workforce Strategy, developed with the aged care sector, outlines 14 areas for action to support Australia's aged care workforce. The actions identified in the strategy aim to support the sector to invest in better workforce planning, implement better job pathways to allow for career progression, build leadership across the sector at all levels, foster the next generation of leaders, implement practical strategies for attracting and retaining the right people with the right fit, and keep valued skills and talented people. This strategy can be executed in one to three years and in doing so will then position the sector for the next four to seven years.
Meeting the Social and Emotional Support Needs of Older People using Aged Care Services considers older people’s aspirations for quality caregiving relationships and for decent social and emotional care. These aspirations feature in Australia’s quality standards, which emphasise person-centredness as an effective means of supporting wellbeing among older people, according to the authors. They argue that thin industrial regulation, individualised funding and consumer-directed care, and an increasing share of profit motivated provision are converging to promote fragmented, task-orientated models of care, rather than holistic person-centred models consistent with quality.
Turning to the challenge of an ageing workforce, the Direct Client Care and Support IRC's 2019 Skills Forecast reports the share of people aged ’65 or over’ will increase in coming decades, as will the labour force participation rate. The implications of an ageing workforce mean the sector is likely to experience high levels of staff leaving the workforce. This presents challenges, in adapting the workplace arrangements to encourage mature-age workers to remain, and advantages, such as retaining extensive work experience.
The study Improving the Health of Older Aged Care Workers considers pushes to extend the working lives and participation of older ‘pink collar workers’ (those in care-related roles requiring less than a bachelor’s degree qualification) in the labour force. It also considers two other policy concerns: the effects on workers when aged care is conceptualised as a marketplace in which consumers make informed decisions about the care they wish to receive; and, the crisis in the aged care workforce. The report states that maintaining and developing this workforce is critical and requires a focus on job quality and employment conditions.
According to the Direct Client Care and Support IRC's 2019 Skills Forecast, DCCS employees experience limited career progression opportunities, but career progression is a necessary consideration for the sector’s workforce and overall quality client care. It also points to the casualisation of the workforce. According to the Disability Services Market Report 2019 there is a continuing shift towards part-time employment and casualisation. This trend means opportunities to establish long-term careers and progress are limited. Further, issues around working time arrangements contributes to much concern for workers, according to Working in New Disability Markets: a Survey of Australia’s Disability Workforce. Over half of workers surveyed work less than full time across multiple jobs, most reported doing vital tasks in unpaid time and many report constant shift changes and unstable rostering arrangements.