Media Statement - 21st November 2007
Federal Labor today announced a plan to boost the number of qualified nurses and personal care workers in aged care services.
Federal Labor will invest $6.6 million over five years to encourage 1,000 qualified nurses who have been out of the health workforce for more than 12 months to work into the aged care sector.
A Rudd Labor Government will also increase training places for personal care workers within the 450,000 additional VET places announced during the Labor campaign launch.
Nurses who re-enter the aged care industry will receive cash bonuses of $6,000 – $3,000 after six months back on the job and a further $3,000 after 18 months.
Aged care providers will receive $1,000 per re-entry nurse to assist with the costs of re-training and re-skilling.
Federal Labor’s plan to get 1,000 extra qualified nurses into residential aged care will be open to both registered and enrolled nurses.
The expansion of aged care services around the country is at risk due to the lack of qualified staff.
There are around 40,000 qualified nurses working in the residential aged care sector. The 2004 report The Care of Older Australians: A Picture of the Residential Aged Care Workforce found that 25% of residential aged care facilities had vacancies for Registered Nurses.
The survey also found 29% of nurses did not expect to be working in aged care in three years time.
The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations skills in demand lists indicate a shortage of aged care registered nurses all States and Territories apart from the Australian Capital Territory.
There are 24,564 nurses not currently looking for work in nursing. 19,345 of these are registered nurses.
The addition of bonuses for aged care nurses will mean that Federal Labor is committing a total of $87.6 million to bring 10,250 extra nurses into Australia’s hospital and aged care systems.
New vocational places for personal care workers will be rolled out on the advice of Skills Australia, a high level group of experts able to provide advice on current and future skills shortages.
Personal care workers are the frontline of aged care service delivery in both residential and community care.
Skills Australia will focus on providing additional workers for industries of national importance.
With the rapid expansion of aged care services that will be needed as the population ages, the aged care industry can expect that Skills Australia will respond to the future need for more personal care staff.
Skills Australia will make its recommendation drawn on commissioned research and industry stakeholders. This will improve the information on which aged care workforce planning is drawn.
New places will be allocated by Industry Skills Councils, through a tender process, to individual employers who are prepared to support workforce development
The Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council will work with aged care providers to determine their training needs and match those with training places.
This will give aged care providers an incentive to provide training to existing personal care workers who do not have qualifications.
Greater qualifications will contribute to improvements in quality of aged care services.
There are approximately 90,000 personal care workers in residential aged care alone.
In 2004, approximately 40% of personal care workers did not hold formal qualifications. In the same year 10% of residential services did not employ any qualified personal care workers.