State Focus: With a shrinking workforce in the state, aged services in Tasmania are forced to compete with the health and disability sectors for staff, but as AAA discovers, stakeholders have decided their future lies in collaboration.
Glamorgan Spring Bay is picture postcard Tasmania.
The municipality in the south east coast of the island state runs from the Denison River at Bicheno and takes in the Maria Island and Freycinet Peninsula national parks.
But along with its captivating natural beauty, Glamorgan represents another characteristic of Tasmania – an ageing population.
Just under half of Glamorgan Spring Bay’s population is aged over 65, and that segment is growing.
“Tasmania is the oldest state in Australia,” says local demographer Lisa Denny. “Our median age is 40.9 years compared with the Australian median of 37.1 years.”
Tasmania’s population is ageing for different reasons to Australia as an aggregate, Denny says, and this provides both challenges and opportunities for the local aged services sector.
“What makes Tasmania age at a faster rate is what’s known as net interstate migration. Essentially, as a state, we lose more people of working age than we gain. This makes our population of working age contract considerably.”
Denny has a phrase for what’s happening in Tasmania; she calls it the “double whammy effect”. Not only is the state’s population ageing proportionally, and bringing with it an increased demand for aged services, its supply of labour is diminishing at the same time.
The net interstate migration is linked to the state’s economic performance. To put it plainly, people go where the jobs are. In 2012, one of Tasmania’s worst economic years, the state lost people in all ages groups from 0 to 59 years, says Denny.
“That contracting workforce needs to supply labour to all of the industry sectors in Tasmania. So the aged care sector needs to position itself as an attractive sector in which to work, because it’s highly competitive in terms of the labour market, and will become increasingly so.”
A compounding challenge for local aged services, according to Denny, who conducted an aged care workforce census in 2010, is that close to 50 per cent of the workforce is aged over 45. “So not only are we going to have to increase the number of people working in the sector, but we have to replace the ones who will be retiring,” she says.
The good news, in Denny’s view, is that given Tasmania’s depressed local economy, the aged services sector offers workers some highly desirable prospects, such as security, flexibility and growth.
To capitalise on that opportunity, local aged services have come together to spearhead a range of initiatives focused on workforce and training.
Darren Mathewson, CEO of Aged and Community Services Tasmania (ACST), says the sector realised it needed to “get in and drive the training and education market.”
A network of providers across the state is now engaging with the training sector on a regular basis, he says. Roundtables between aged services and registered training organisations (RTOs) are facilitating a “two-way conversation that allows RTOs to talk about the challenges they face in developing and delivering courses, and for providers to drive the issue of quality, price and responsiveness,” says Mathewson.
The goal is that, when it comes to workforce training, aged services are “market makers” and not just “market receivers”.
The roundtables also ensure the RTOs are kept abreast of the ever-changing policy and practice landscape in aged care, he says. “CDC is a classic example. We presume RTOs will pick up the knowledge base and deliver it into the sector, but we need to support them and provide some of that intelligence so their training is contemporary.”
‘Collaborate or cannibalise’
In fact, collaboration is the recurring theme in the overall approach being taken by the aged services sector in Tasmania.
As Mathewson explains: “The future in this state is how health, primary health and aged care can collaborate in a whole range of ways, but particularly around workforce… How we optimise the use of education and training assets that are generally held by the public sector, but can be used by others.”
Accordingly, aged services are strengthening their relationship with the state department of health through the Tasmanian Clinical Education Network, which has premier facilities, particularly in rural and remote regions.
And recognising the scenario outlined by Denny, that aged care will be increasingly competing with subsectors such as public health and disability for a shrinking pool of workers, local aged services are eyeing a ‘community workforce’ approach.
If successful, this approach could have national ramifications. Earlier this year the Community Services & Health Industry Skills Council (CS&HISC) identified the need for strategic workforce planning across the care industries (read AAA’s coverage of that here). The council said Australia needed a health and community services workforce plan that considered the development of the whole workforce.
On that front, Tasmania may well be ahead of the pack. Mathewson says aged services have already begun discussions with National Disability Services in Tasmania. “We’re developing a draft MOU with a particular focus on how we can collaborate on workforce,” he says.
With all the indictors showing a future shortage of labour across the health, disability and aged care sectors, which all have common skillsets, it makes sense to undertake workforce planning collaboratively, Mathewson says. “I always say, we’ve got to collaborate now otherwise it will be cannibalism later.”
Suite of programs
Elsewhere, local aged services have developed a range of programs to attract, recruit and retain staff.
For example, the Graduate Nurse Program promotes aged care as a career pathway of choice, provides a structured framework of induction, collaboration, mentorship and professional development, says Lee Veitch, the CSHISC’s business partner in Tasmania.
The program continues to grow in popularity, says Veitch, and this year had 119 applications.
The other initiatives spearheaded by the sector include the New Directions program, which attracts new workers, the Foundation Skills Program, which provides literacy and numeracy training, and the Aiding the Aged Program (see panel).
Importantly, Veitch says each program is driven by industry, with steering groups overseeing the Graduate Nurse Program and Foundation Skills Program, and an advisory group recently established to develop an IT capability strategy.
“That’s the really important element to all of this,” she says. “It is owned and driven by industry, and everyone has a stake in it.”
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A taxing problem for providers
The Federal Government’s decision to adopt the recommendation of the Commission of Audit to suspend the aged care payroll tax supplement could have a big impact on the public health system in Tasmania, according to Tony Smith, CEO of Leading Age Services Tasmania.
“Those of us who are required to pay this monthly impost will find ourselves with little choice but to reduce expenditure where we can,” Smith says. “A saving by government of $186.5 million has been estimated, which equates to a loss of funding to affected providers of $3,056 per resident per year. Jobs will certainly be placed at risk, as will the incentive to commence construction of new facilities to meet the future demand for residential aged care.”
As AAA has reported, the Federal Government has made it clear it does not intend to revisit its controversial decision, saying the matter is now up to individual state governments to decide.
Smith believes there could be a big impact for Tasmania, and on its public health system, in particular. “Failure to meet future predicted aged care bed demands will leave older Australians with little options other than the public hospital system,” he says.
“In Tasmania, future growing demand for hospital services will add to greater public angst following our newly elected State Government finding it necessary to place on hold the $368 million reconstruction of our largest acute facility, the Royal Hospital, after being advised that the project could end up more than $70 million over budget.”
Of even more concern, Smith says, are “recent reports of Health Minister Michael Ferguson terminating the employment of top health services public servants, following a scathing report from the Integrity Commission.”
Smith says the obvious question is, if the provision of aged care services is reduced as a consequence of the removal of the payroll tax supplement, and a corresponding reduction of competition and consumer choicer, “will the hospital system be able to meet the demands of the growing Ageing population in Tasmania?”
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Tasmania: Ageing population
- Today, 20% of the state’s population is aged over 65. By 2034, it will have risen to 25%.
- Today, there are 10,000 people aged over 85 in Tasmania. By 2034 that will have doubled to 20,000.
- Since 1992, Tasmania’s median age has increased 8.1 years compared with 4.7 years nationally.
If you want to retain aged care workers pay them more money – wages have barely gone up since I started working in the industry 20 years ago. Have workers registered and raise the standard of the training as has happened somewhat in Child Care, because as it stands anybody can work in the industry. The industry also needs to have some legislation around the minimum amount of care workers/nurses etc to residents in residential facilities, as they do in Child Care. Once you have better workers then changes for the better will naturally occur like better meals for example. If I end up in a residential facility and they still have fish on Friday’s I will scream and/or if I get asked what I would like for a particular meal at a time that is not at the time I want the food. However, I am grateful for the improvements in the industry thus far.