Workforce worries partly an image problem

Above: Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council CEO, Rod Cooke.

By Stephen Easton

Jobs in aged care, health and community services need a better image in the eyes of school leavers, and the federal government is the logical choice to drive such a campaign, according to the independent Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council (CS&HISC).

The CS&HISC has just released its 2012 Environmental Scan, or EScan, and warns that “by 2050 there will be 3.5 million people requiring aged care in Australia and not enough workers to care for them”.

And according to the industry skills council’s CEO, Rod Cooke, a similar story is unfolding across the whole of the combined community services and health workforce, which is the fastest growing in Australia, but also one of the oldest, and faces the prospect of 60 per cent of its workers retiring in the next decade.

To attract the new workers needed, Mr Cooke said the federal government should fund a nationwide recruitment and retention strategy, focused on changing the way school leavers and other job seekers see careers like aged care, childcare, welfare support or counselling.

Such a campaign could take a leaf out of the mining industry’s book, he suggested.

“At the moment [mining companies] are trying to change public perceptions, overcome a negative image, and attract people into their sector,” Mr Cooke said. 

“That has been done by a couple of other sectors too … and I think we need to do that for community services and health.”

Mr Cooke suggested a mixed media campaign, not limited to television but also including articles in newspaper careers sections, promotional websites and online videos that show health and community services careers in a positive light, such as CS&HISC’s ‘Healthy Stories’ and ‘Champions’ videos.

Recently, examples of similar videos that show aged care in a positive light have been produced by Wintringham Aged Care, and by the Aged and Community Services Association of South Australia and the Northern Territory. 

“Those sorts of materials provide examples for people to say, ‘I haven’t thought of that,’ and we need to make sure we present those options in schools too,” Mr Cooke said.

“Kids don’t come out of school and naturally say, ‘I want to work in aged care, or childcare,’ so we need a campaign to send positive messages about the value of the work, and I think the logical people to do it are the federal government.

“They provide most of the funding for health and community services; they are responsible for people’s health and wellbeing.”

Mr Cooke said he hoped that a groundswell of support for the idea would encourage the government to take a lead role and establish a framework to help private companies, not-for-profit organisations and services run by state governments send the message that “we’ve got a job for you and it’s a great job”.

ABC News have recently reported that many aged care providers and unions see low wages and poor conditions as the main factor making it difficult to recruit staff, especially younger people.

Rod Cooke agreed that as well as spreading the message that working in aged care was “a great job”, it was also important for the government to help ensure that this message was facutally correct, through supporting innovative service delivery and improved vocational training, as well as better pay and conditions.

“We, as a nation, need a strategic plan to raise wages [in health and community services],” Mr Cooke suggested. “Clearly better wages would help; that’s got to be one of the levers you look at pulling to try and effect the changes we need.”

But, he cautioned, more money for higher pay in the mostly government-funded sector “is not going to be easy to come by”.

The latest EScan also finds that the lines are continuing to blur between the different sectors that make up community services and health, with the emergence of an “integrated care sector” still on the cards.

This will be driven by a shift towards consumer directed funding – like that proposed for the National Disability Insurance Scheme – and based on roles that bridge the traditional divisions between areas like aged care, palliative care, disability support and primary healthcare, Mr Cooke said.

When combined, health and community services employ 11.5 per cent of the national workforce and will need to find an additional 323,000 workers in the next three years – a quarter of the total staffing requirements expected across the whole economy.

Aged care is also identified by the CS&HISC among several key areas where significant changes must continue to occur in service delivery and work roles, to focus more preventive healthcare rather than treatment alone.