Why aged care providers are struggling to keep staff to care for our elderly
LOW pay rates, tough working conditions and the sector’s poor reputation are making it difficult for aged care providers to keep good staff.
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AGED care in South Australia faces a dilemma as providers struggle to employ high-quality staff to care for older patients who are increasingly sicker and more frail when they arrive.
The concerns have been raised in submissions to a federal senate committee examining the future of Australia’s aged-care workforce.
One of the state’s biggest providers, Eldercare, said one in five staff had left its organisation over a 12-month period, including 110 who were sacked for performance-related issues.
And the union representing aged care workers says that, in one instance, a 25-bed dementia ward was staffed with just one carer from 11pm to 7am as the provider aims to save costs.
As the spotlight remains fixed on aged care in SA, after the Oakden scandal, providers have raised concerns with the federal Senate’s Community Affairs References Committee, which will hand down its findings later this month.
Eldercare chief executive Jane Pickering said aged-care workers were flaunting industrial agreements in a bid to make enough money from roles considered poorly paid.
“Many staff inform us that they have multiple jobs across several providers so that they can increase their weekly earnings and escape industrial requirements around required breaks between shifts and days off,” Ms Pickering said. “This clearly creates risk in terms of (work health and safety) and potential injury as well as potential breaches of visa requirements.”
A report last year showed aged-care providers were making as little as $2.51 a day a bed.
David Di Troia, secretary of United Voice SA — the union representing aged-care workers — said the sector faced many challenges because of a lack of stable government funding. “Providers often try to save money by cutting staffing levels and tasking workers with unsustainably high workloads,” he said. “Carers have shorter time frames to complete an increasing number of tasks and are often expected to complete necessary training in their own time.’’
Under the current aged-care award, minimum weekly pay for personal care workers starts at $715 and increases to $868 — about half the Australian full-time average wage.
Flinders University School of Nursing and Midwifery Associate Professor Ann Harrington told the committee older people were now encouraged to stay at home longer.
“By the time they get to residential care they are a lot sicker, they are a lot frailer and they are a lot older,” Dr Harrington said. “Some of them, by the time they do get to the end stage, have some palliative-care issues. “ ... When you talk about skill mix, there is not a lot of education around palliative care in residential care.”