Australian Unity Home Health is Australia's largest provider of home care services, delivering personalised and tailored care to support more than 100,000 to live and age well at home. Across the country, it employs a 6,000 strong workforce of dedicated permanent employees, including allied health clinicians, nurses, administration workers, personal care workers and domestic care assistants.
The organisation is strongly committed to providing opportunities for skills development and career pathways for all employees, including providing pathways for domestic care workers to progress to personal care workers.
Domestic care assistants undertake routine tasks including cleaning, meal preparation, shopping and providing transport. Personal care workers are able to also help customers with personal supports including bathing, grooming and mobility.
Since 2024, more than 200 domestic care assistants have used the traineeship system to complete the Certificate III in Individual Support to compliment the internal pathway to become a personal care worker. For those who have completed the program, some 75 per cent of graduates are employed nine months after completion.
Cassandra Hurst, Vocational Education and Training Manager at Australian Unity Home Health says the retention and development of its care workforce is a priority.
"The certificate has created opportunities for our workforce to advance their careers, but it also helps to create connections with other trainees and colleagues they normally wouldn’t meet in their day-to-day role," said Cassandra.
"The majority of our care workers time is spent in the community, delivering critical care to older Australians and given their geographical spread, it’s important they feel connected. The learning community that is created in the program has been the biggest non-clinical skill that our care workers provide positive feedback about."
For personal care workers looking to advance their careers, Australian Unity is scoping qualification pathways into case management, allied health and nursing. While the Certificate III in Individual Support has some relevance for these workers, more flexibility within the training package to select units of competency that better align to home care roles is required.
