The Government’s vision is for a sustainable and productive care and support economy that delivers quality care and support with decent jobs.
Three high level goals will help achieve this vision.
Goal 1: Quality care and support
The people receiving care and support services are the central focus of care and support systems, and the priority is that they receive quality care and support. Iterative reforms have progressed Australia towards a more person-centred care and support system, delivered by an increasingly professionalised workforce. However, concerns about quality and safeguards remain. Systems can be hard to navigate, people can struggle to access the services they need and there are not enough capable and skilled workers.
Carers play a vital role in supporting the needs of people with a disability, medical condition (including terminal or chronic illness), mental illness or a person who is frail due to ageing. Quality care and support services support carers’ wellbeing and sustain them in their caring role.
Goal 2: Decent jobs
In care and support services, the quality of care and support depends on the quality of jobs. There is high turnover across the system because the jobs have low pay and recognition, limited career progression, high workloads and, at times, unsafe work conditions. They are often characterised by insecure work. Understaffing, inadequate training and high workloads can lead to poor quality services. To meet the demand for care and support workers in the future, we must retain and attract workers by making these decent jobs with career prospects.
Goal 3: Productive and sustainable
Our care and support systems are complex. While each sector has evolved separately they are also interdependent. Services are provided through market-based models in each sector. However, as the majority funder, program designer and regulator, Government has a lot of influence on these markets. Examining this economy as a system of care and support provides opportunities to do things better and to find ways to drive productivity gains. Although productivity will look different across each of the care and support sectors, there are opportunities to foster innovation and provide better outcomes through use of technology, better regulation and market design.
As we work towards these goals, and the vision they underpin, we do so in a context where Government budgets are under strain. Financing the care and support economy in a sustainable way presents a significant challenge. It is important that the Australian community has a conversation about how we value care and support, and how we will fund it, to make sure Australians can continue to receive the quality services they need.