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Recruiting overseas staff to fill workforce shortages in aged care could prompt the sector to become more culturally safe, a gerontology expert has said.
Australia is increasingly more depending on overseas personal care workers and nurses to cover the anticipated shortfall of over 200,000 full-time workers by 2050.
Already 40 per cent of the aged care workforce is estimated to come from a culturally linguistically diverse background.
Monash University's Professor Bianca Brijnath, who is the Director of Social Gerontology at the National Ageing Research Institute, said racism remains highly prevalent in aged care and prevents the sector from delivering high-quality care.
"The cornerstone of the aged care system that everybody agreed on is the importance of person-centred care," Professor Brijnath said.
"You cannot put anybody at the centre of care if that person or the people around them are abusive to you.
"It's very difficult to deliver quality care and to form a relationship with someone who abuses you on a day-to-day basis because of the colour of your skin or your accent."
Join Aged Care Insite's conversation with Professor Brijnath about how racism in the aged care industry persists while other sectors have anti-racism measures in place.
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We all know that there is a shortfall in staff, however, once again recruiting overseas staff only fills the numbers it does not improve care. Staff that do not speak clear english are very difficult for residents to understand and the same for the staff understanding what the resident is saying to them, add dementia into the mix and this is where behaviours and verbal abuse can occur. Perhaps better pay for australians would encourage more to do this difficult work. There is an over-representation of multi-cultural staff working in nursing homes compared to multi-cultural residents. We cannot simply fill gaps and tick boxes to suit staffing needs, our elderly deserve better. Also, where are these people going to live? Australian families cannot find accommodation but I am guessing there will huge incentives for people to come in from overseas where instead these should be directed to Australians to get into care workforce.