CEO’s Column

STRUCTURAL ISSUES IN THE INDUSTRY MUST BE ADDRESSED

HOW COVID-19 HAS MAGNIFIED THE PROBLEMS, AND OUR CALL FOR REFORM

Sean Rooney Chief Executive Officer Leading Age Services Australia

Last 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

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proposed the government set up a National Aged Care COVID Coordination Centre to better plan for supply and allocation of surge workforce and infection control resources to avoid the dire shortages experienced during summer. Such coordination would work to smooth out the ‘boom and bust’ nature of how COVID is impacting aged care providers over the past two years. Supporting this would be a better organised rollout of vaccination programs among aged services residents and clients.

As we approach the federal election the focus on aged care over the summer gives LASA and the AACC an opportunity to fine tune its own campaign for aged care reform. The pandemic has magnified the sector’s structural deficiencies identified by the Royal Commission final report. Given the signs are that the election, expected in May, could be a close contest, we as a sector can press both major parties for a reset of the reform process begun after the May Budget last year. We know that we need more staff, we need them to be better paid with access to quality skills training and secondly, we need to ensure that aged care services are better equipped to protect their residents and clients. But whoever wins government, we need to go much further and the AACC is looking to recast the reform agenda to focus on the structural deficiencies as identified by the Royal Commission in its final report a year ago: • Funding for an immediate pay rise for aged care staff and a commitment to fund the outcome of the work value case before the Fair Work Commission • Higher quality skills training and career pathways to attract and retain workers in aged care • A commitment to fund the true cost of delivery of care and services • A refocus of regulation aimed at measuring progress, providing support and education rather than simply being punitive. As part of our election campaign on behalf of the age services industry, LASA (via the AACC), will present a blueprint to both major parties which resets aged care reform and focuses on the structural deficiencies and the impact of the pandemic.

I am also pleased to report that plans for LASA and ACSA to work together to realise a better model for sector representation and development are well under way with a Member vote planned to be held April. Please read the Chairman’s report for more information on this important project. ■

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