Workforce—The Bedrock of Aged Care Reform

• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Author: Rob Bonner,Micah D. J. Peters,Annie Butler
• Date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12427

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 285–293 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.12427

Workforce—The Bedrock of Aged Care Reform

Rob Bonner, Micah D. J. Peters and Annie Butler*

Abstract

The Australian Royal Commission into Aged

Care Quality and Safety made 148 recom-

mendations to reform Australian aged care.

The recommendations concerning the sector's

workforce are integral to ensuring that the

widespread neglect and failures character-

ising the sector be addressed and prevented.

This paper discusses several of the

Commission's recommendations in relation

to issues that we see as foundational for

ensuring sustained success of urgent sector‐

wide reform. We focus on mandated staffing

levels and skills mix, attraction and retention,

education and training, staff registration, and

funding transparency and accountability.

1. Introduction

The Royal Commission into Aged Care

Quality and Safety (the Commission) sub-

mitted its final report on 26 February 2021.

This report is the latest in a long history of

major inquiries and reports regarding the

current and future delivery of aged care

services to the around 1.2 million people

who access care in residential care facilities

(nursing homes) and private homes in the

community (home care) (Australian Institute

of Health and Welfare 2019). Following a

distressingly, but accurately titled interim

report called simply ‘Neglect’(Royal

Commission into Aged Care Quality and

Safety 2019), the Commission's final report

‘Care, Dignity, and Respect’is an aspirational

report focused on what can be done to

improve a sector that has systematically failed

some of Australia's most vulnerable.

The Commission's wide‐ranging report

includes 148 recommendations, many of

which are constituted by several detailed

sub‐recommendations or specifications.

While these recommendations are clearly vital

for enhancing the sector, it is the reforms that

concern (either directly or indirectly) the

workforce that we focus on in this paper. As

the Commission (2021, p. 124) states: ‘A

highly skilled, well rewarded and valued aged

care workforce is vital to the success of any

future aged care system’.

In this paper we focus on several inter-

linked issues that we see as fundamental to

ensuring the urgently needed, sector‐wide

reform put forward by the Commission.

We contend that without fundamental,

* Bonner: Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation

(ANMF) South Australian Branch, Adelaide 5008,

Australia; Peters: Australian Nursing and Midwifery

Federation (ANMF) Federal Office, Melbourne 3000,

Australia; Butler: UniSA Clinical and Health Sciences,

Rosemary Bryant AO Research Centre, The University of

South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia. Corresponding

author: Bonner, email <rob.bonner@anmfsa.org.au>.

© 2021 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research,

Faculty of Business and Economics

Published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd