OPINION
STRUCTURAL ISSUES IN THE INDUSTRY MUST BE ADDRESSED HOW COVID-19 HAS MAGNIFIED THE PROBLEMS, AND OUR CALL FOR REFORM
L
Sean Rooney Chief Executive Officer Leading Age Services Australia
ast November, the age services industry was planning for living with COVID-19 as most of Australia was about to open state and territory borders for the first time since February 2020.
Then Omicron hit, slamming the entire economy, disrupting distribution chains and quickly taking hold across aged care, infecting residents and workers. By early January, our Members were faced with severe staff shortages, most with inadequate access to surge workforce compounded by little or no delivery of urgently needed PPE and RATs. Staff were working double and triple shifts just to keep essential services going to support their vulnerable older residents and clients. On 19 January the AACC and ACTU jointly called on the government to respond to the unfolding issues, including calls for worker retention payments and to bring in the ADF to provide support and ensure care was not compromised. On 2 February the AACC released its COVID-19 in aged care – situation report, which documented the extent of the crisis in aged care and reiterated its call on government to deploy the ADF to support services The day before, following AACC advocacy and amid a crescendo of calls on government to fund a pay rise for exhausted aged care workers, it announced a bonus payment of up to $800 to be paid in two instalments over the next couple of months. Within hours it became apparent that only some, not all, aged care workers will receive the bonus. This was against the specific advice that we provided in our advocacy to government on these payments. The media and public focus on aged care intensified further and the day before Parliament resumed on 7 February, the
Sean Rooney speaking about workforce issues on Channel 9’s Today Show, 8 February 2022. government announced that 1,700 ADF personnel would be made available to support those providers who needed it. These challenges, among others faced by providers during the pandemic, have magnified the structural deficiencies already evident across the aged care system and which were identified by the Aged Care Royal Commission—namely workforce, funding and regulation. These were cracks in the system now turned into chasms by the pandemic and particularly the Omicron wave over the summer. While the sector welcomes the ADF deployment and acknowledges the retention payment, these are short-term stop-gap measures which barely address the current issues, let alone the systemic problems. We know that many of you have been stretched to the limit doing all that you can to keep caring for your residents and clients. With the likelihood of more COVID waves coming, and potentially combined with flu this winter, LASA and ACSA have Continued on page 10
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