Prediction: the NDIS will steal the aged care staff that were going to care for us when we are old and frail. The workforce rumblings are just beginning.
The fact is the National Disability Insurance Scheme commences properly this month and we do not have the workforce to deliver it. My prediction: aged care workers will leave caring for the elderly in droves to care for younger people with disabilities.
Most of us have no idea of the revolution taking place in the ‘carer’ sector so let me explain.
A little history
In the final days of the first Rudd government in 2010, the Productivity Commission was asked to look at the plight of care for people with disabilities. By 2012, with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, the NDIS was approved.
Its purpose: “The NDIS will provide about 460,000 Australians under the age of 65 with a permanent and significant disability with the reasonable and necessary supports they need to live an ordinary life.”
We all support this. And we will all pay for it with an increase in the Medicare levy from 2 per cent to 2.5. This will cover about 40%, and then the states have to kick in the other 60% through taxes.
The cost? $22B a year by 2020. And here is the aged care rub. $22B is about the same amount that aged care is going to cost by 2020, up from $14B now.
200,000 workers needed – fast
So we have two lots of $22B to be spent largely on labour by care workers. The aged care sector has about 200,000 people providing this care. So the NDIS has to find another 200,000 over the next 48 months – and they will need caring skills.
Just this week the Chief Executive of National Disability Services, Ken Baker, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that: “There will be pressure on providers to recruit quickly and to recruit in a context where there are labour shortages. The disability service providers will be struggling to recruit the staff they need.”
And they need these workers from this month.
An ageing workforce caring for the aged
Now consider the aged care workforce. 94,000 work in aged care homes and 94,000 work in home care. According to peak body ACSA[1], 90% of the direct workforce are women and 40% are under the age of 45, meaning 60% are aged over 45.
The younger aged care workforce now have the opportunity to be paid the same or more to care for young people in their homes – which will be often closer to where this young workforce live. They can be paid to accompany people to go shopping or the doctor or play video games (simplistically).
Older female care workers can choose the less physical disability work as well, plus cut back on night and weekend rosters.
This will happen. And at the same time aged care funding to care providers is being cut by Government, which means staff will have to do more or let the amount and level of care drop. Already operators are letting part-time staff go – 100 announced in the Illawarra region (south of Sydney) in the past week.
Technology can allow operators to replace staff to a degree, but ‘real care’ is delivered by people.
The NDIS is essential but so is care for the frail and elderly. It is a matter of respect and responsibility. We all need to talk about this with our own families because, if for no other reason, eventually we will all be ‘frail and elderly’.
[1] ‘The Aged Care Workforce in Australia’ position paper – February 2015
