Albury aged care workers campaign to increase staff numbers, wages and skills

The Albury branch of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Foundation were on Dean Street yesterday to raise awareness about the "broken" aged care sector as part of a national campaign to set aged care as a priority in this year's Federal budget.

Albury aged care worker and Union Aged Care Leadership Team member Janine Quinn said the sector was in crisis.

"We're actually breaching human rights," she said.

She said routine under-staffing and a lack of skilled workers meant aged care residents often didn't receive the care they deserved.

"If you go in and read the human rights act...the very first article speaks about dignity and we're taking that away from them," she said.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care was released about a month ago and highlighted serious problems in the sector.

"Part of what we're doing today is highlighting that the royal commission has happened, now we need to do something with it," Ms Quinn said.

"Australia has a pretty good medical system as far as the world goes.

"It's really disappointing and pretty poor that as leaders in the world our aged care system is at the other end.

"We want to bring it up in line with our health care system."

Ms Quinn said she was passionate about delivering quality aged care, but in her five years in the industry had seen instances of severe under staffing in Border aged care homes.

"Let's say four carers to about 130 residents and one Registered Nurse," she said.

"I've seen that in Albury, not through any fault in the facilities, often it's just because we don't have enough staff, we don't have enough skilled workers."

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Ms Quinn said the campaign was calling on four key changes: improved ratios, greater skills, transparency of funding and increased wages.

"As far as ratios go, across the board, it really needs to be about one to four, so one carer to four residents," she said.

"We can't spend the amount of time with them that we need to and a lot of the time we're working so short staffed, that it's actually dangerous."

She said the skill level of many aged care staff was poor.

"It's not ok, they have no idea what they're doing, they have no idea what's expected of them," she said.

"We've then got to train them and that takes time away from the care that we give to the residents.

"I even believe I myself need to be upskilled."

She said aged care workers needed to be paid more, especially considering workers were responsible for someone's life.

"What we get paid...is less than a supermarket worker," she said.

"My day would consist of personal care, medication, laundry, cooking, and lifestyle, now I don't actually get time to do any lifestyle things with them.

"The skills that we have, we're not paid accordingly."

The fourth area, Ms Quinn said, was ensuring funding was delivered transparently.

"We need to be able to see where the funding is going and how it's being spent so we can ensure our residents are getting value for money," she said.

"The residents put a lot of money into trusting that they're going to get a certain level of care and they're not, they're just not.

"These people, they shaped Australia, they served us and now it's our time to serve them."

People can go to https://www.itsnottoomuch.com/ if they would like to learn more.

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