The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety described the need to build an aged care profession. There are currently limited opportunities to add to initial worker training and build specialisation, even though the increasingly complex needs of people in aged care call for greater skilling and specialisation.
The ECEC sector has already made significant advances in professionalising its workforce. In response to mounting research evidence showing that quality early childhood education has a multitude of long-lasting, positive effects on children, there has been an increasing focus on the educative component of ECEC.85 Today, there are minimum qualifications for staff, and minimum ratios for staff trained at the Diploma or Bachelor degree level. The Early Years Learning Framework provides a nationally consistent curriculum to guide education and care services for children from birth to five years.86These changes, introduced over the past decade, have developed a strong sense of professional identity within the sector.
Aged care and disability support sectors are commonly reported to lack career pathways, meaning opportunities for further training or experience to lead to more senior roles with increased pay. 87 Currently, wages stagnate after a few years in these jobs.
The process of professionalisation, including in aged care and disability support, will include changes to education, training, wages, labour conditions and career progression, responsibilities, representation and enforcement of regulation. A key aim of professionalisation is to attract people to work in each of these sectors as a long-term career.
Career progression opportunities are also important for attracting and retaining workers. Workers value sectors where they see they can build a strong professional identity, have opportunities to specialise or enjoy a diverse career while they become more senior. These sectors ultimately build a reputation as offering desirable and valued jobs. This process will also work to reverse some gendered biases placed on care and support work, and provide upwards mobility to the high proportions of marginalised people employed in these sectors.
Modern awards and enterprise agreements are an effective lever to support professionalisation. These can include qualification-based classification structures and opportunities for additional qualifications that lead to classification and wage progression.
Objective 2.3
Jobs are professionalised and there are pathways for skilling and career progression
How will we get there?
The Australian Government will work with the relevant Jobs and Skills Council to understand career pathways in the care and support system and find opportunities to better support professionalisation through suitable training and professional development. This will also require an investigation of education, training and career pathways and classifications.
The Priority Workforce Initiatives Action Plan outlines steps to initiate this work.
- For example, D Warren, M O’Connor, D Smart and B Edwards, A critical review of the early childhood literature, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2016. Return to footnote 85 ↩
- Department of Education, ‘Belonging, Being & Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia,’ ACECQA, Volume 2, 2022. Return to footnote 86 ↩
- Senate Community Affairs References Committee, 'Chapter 3: Attracting, training and retaining aged care workers', Future of Australia's aged care sector workforce report, Parliament of Australia website, 2017, accessed February 2023; BETA, NDIS workforce retention. Return to footnote 87 ↩