Migrants required to meet aged care shortages
Think tank calls for visa reforms for stretched aged care sector. But how do we ensure that they have somewhere to live? Is the solution under our noses?
Without migrant aged care workers, it’s doubtful Australia would have the workforce for a sustainable age care system.
That’s the conclusion of the Council for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), which found Australia needs at least 400,000 additional workers across residential and in-home aged care by 2050.
Demand for care and carers will continue to grow as the population ages. It is estimated 2.5 million people aged 65-plus will require some form of care by then, up from 1.5 million now.
However, the basis on which migrant workers are here is itself shaky. It is conservatively estimated around 70,000 – or one-in-six – personal care workers are on temporary visas.
In a new report, CEDA concludes Australia’s aged care labour agreements are failing to address critical workforce shortages and should be replaced with a new visa program.
According to CEDA, demand for care and carers will grow rapidly as the population ages.
But with housing a big problem in Australia, how can we ensure a migrant workforce has somewhere to live?
More on that later.
The CEDA report, Duty of care: How to fix the aged care worker shortage, found just 2,426 temporary migrants were sponsored under all labour agreements in the sector at the end of June – that’s less than 1% of all personal care workers in aged care.
“The Federal Government said it would investigate an essential skills pathway for critical sectors like aged care in its 2023 Migration Strategy, but there has been little progress so far on this front,” CEDA chief executive, Melinda Cilento, said.
“The labour agreement approach is not working to fix the shortage and is not a substitute for an essential skills visa pathway.”
The report says that while aged care labour agreements are meant to help bring in qualified workers from overseas, 90% of visas under the scheme are going to migrants already in Australia.
Aged care providers are using the agreement to retain existing staff rather than expand the workforce.
The reasons include:
- Protracted negotiations
- Inconsistent processes across states
- High visa costs deterring providers from using the agreements.
Most temporary migrants in the sector currently are on student, partner, or working holiday visas.
Let Pensioners Work
National Seniors Australia (NSA) has consistently told government it can address some of the shortages by incentivising existing aged care workers, many of whom are nearing retirement, to continue to work without penalising them through the Aged Pension income test.
Currently, pensioners who earn more than pension limits lose their pension payments at a rate of 50 cents for every dollar earned. We need to retain older workers throughout the economy, but especially in the care sector, to meet desperate workforce shortages.
Letting pensioners work would also attract retirees to rejoin the aged care workforce.
What we are calling for: Employment income should be exempt from the income test for all pensioners, but could be trialled first in the health and care sectors (aged, disability, child care) where worker shortages are a matter of life and death.
The benefits: This will give older people greater income and retain more people in the workforce to address job vacancies.
Economic modelling: We commissioned Deloitte to conduct modelling into the costs and benefits of exempting work income from the Age Pension income test. It found that the cost to government would be neutral if 8.3% of pensioners worked or worked more.
You can read more about this and other NSA aged care and pensioner initiatives here.
Ms Cilento says bringing in qualified workers through direct pathways would support the delivery of high-quality care.
“We need to pull all levers to grow the care workforce, including a streamlined migration pathway,” she said.
An essential skills visa would allow all aged care providers to sponsor workers in both residential and in-home care without the complex negotiations currently required.
This would be accompanied by an online matching system to connect qualified workers overseas with Australian employers.
The visa would target the same occupations as the labour agreement – aged and disability carers, personal care assistants and nursing support workers – but through a direct, industry-wide process.
“Migration must complement, not replace, efforts to build the Australian aged care workforce through better pay, conditions, and training,” Ms Cilento said.
“Providers need to increase training of both new and existing staff and invest in new technology and innovation.
“Given the magnitude of the challenge, however, the Australian workforce alone will not be nearly enough to reverse the shortage.”
CEDA's recommendations include:
- Introduce an essential skills visa for aged care workers as a priority
- Abolish labour market testing for the occupations covered by the aged care labour agreement, as they face critical shortage
- Reduce or waive the Skilling Australia Fund levy for essential skills sponsorships.
“Every three-to-five years we should review whether the visa is working effectively and not adversely affecting, education, training, or wage outcomes," Ms Cilento said.
With migrant workers needed to address growing workforce shortages, this raises the question of housing.
One option is to require that sponsors ensure that migrant workers have a place to live. But how can we do that without straining already weak supply of housing?
Possible solutions are to match migrant workers with home care recipients or require new aged care homes to include housing for workers.
The former was a solution raised with NSA by a community member, who suggested that he would be willing to house a migrant aged care worker to provide him with the care he needed.
With many older people living in houses with spare rooms, could this help deliver care, while also solving issues of loneliness and isolation for those willing to give it a go?
It’s a radical idea and won’t be for everyone. It would require significant checks and balances to ensure the person was the right fit and to avoid exploitation or abuse, especially financial abuse.
But could it work to meet workforce demands without straining housing supply?
Related reading: CEDA, Brisbane Times, NSA
