Faith-based aged care networks have called on the Federal Government to add personal care workers to the skilled migration list, in a bid to shore up the workforce.

At last week’s Jobs and Skills Summit, Catholic Health Australia (CHA), Uniting NSW.ACT, and UnitingCare Australia urged Immigration Minister Andrew Giles to make the change, with CHA CEO Pat Garcia (pictured) saying an influx of overseas care workers could help “plug the gap”.

“When there are almost 60,000 vacancies in aged care right now, this is something that Government can do, and do it quickly.

“There is no doubt that we have more work to do to attract and retain our domestic aged care workers, but bringing in workers from countries that have an existing relationship with Australia will help alleviate what is a workforce crisis,” he said.

According to Saviour Buhagiar (pictured), Director of Seniors Services at Uniting NSW.ACT, skilled migration must accompany fully-funded wage increases and training improvements if the staffing crisis is to be addressed.

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The workforce crisis in aged care is very real. We have 10% vacancy rates across our operations, about 1,000 of them in aged care.

“After the work our people have done during the pandemic to keep seniors safe, we cannot keep asking them to work double shifts and struggle to fill rosters. We need the boost to our workforce that including personal care workers in the migration list will deliver,” he said.

The Government has announced a boost in the migration cap to 195,000, a move that had been speculated to be on the table prior to the summit.