Additional Aged Care Funding to Spark Surge in Mobile Home Care Workers

The aged care royal commission’s interim report has described aged care in Australia as a ‘shocking tale of neglect’. The report identified three priority areas - a massive shortage of home-care packages, overuse of chemical restraint, and removing younger people in aged care.

Home care has been highlighted as a particular area of neglect, with limited resources and long waiting periods, even for those considered to have higher care and support needs.

The report found that once someone is assessed as needing the highest level of care, they can wait for a year and often longer for the package to become a reality. As a result, many people move into aged care prematurely, and alarmingly many more die whilst waiting for a Home Care Package. In fact, 16,000 older Australians died in just one year waiting for Home Care.

In response, on Monday the Morrison government announced that they would be providing an additional $537m in funding to aged care, with $496.3m to go directly to home care. This funding will provide an additional 10,000 Home Care placements, with a focus on the higher need Level 3 and Level 4 Home Care Packages. Around 5,500 of these places will be rolled out starting on December 1.

This important injection of funds into Home Care will also generate a surge of Home Care nurses and staff working remotely across Australia. The increase in remote workers also comes with an increased load on employers to manage scheduling, compliance and worker safety.

Workforce management software Alloc8 is working with businesses across Australia to reduce this extra load, by streamlining scheduling and timesheet management, using built-in compliance triggers to ensure staff aren’t working over the maximum allowed, and with additional features to ensure correct processes and procedures are maintained in a remote workforce.

If you think your business may be impacted by the Royal Commission findings, or want to improve processes within your mobile workforce, contact Alloc8 today to discuss how we can help.