Welcome to the latest Kaiāwhina Workforce in Action Newsletter. We're pleased to share the latest news and progress about the Kaiāwhina Workforce Action Plan.
The Plan has less than 12 months to go to the end of the five-year plan period. The Kaiāwhina Workforce Action Plan Working Group has been focused on advancing actions across all seven domains with a goal that by 30 June 2020 every action has either been completed (and increasingly embedded as business as usual), or significantly progressed. The current version of the Plan is hosted on the Plan website www.workforceinaction.org.nz.
The Kaiāwhina Working Group wishes to share four areas of activity with you – these reflect the broad involvement across the health and disability sectors in progressing the Plan actions.
Workforce Recognition Domain: Research of Interest
The AUT research into the impact of the pay equity settlement was launched 28 March 2019.
The Value of Care: Understanding the Impact of the 2017 Pay Equity Settlement reports on research conducted in collaboration with the Caring Counts Coalition in 2018. Dr Julie Douglas and Associate Professor Katherine Ravenswood conducted focus groups and interviews with managers and care and support workers to understand how the pay equity settlement affected them.
Aug 2019
The Kaiāwhina Workforce Programme, overseen by a partnership between the Ministry of Health & Careerforce sets out a 20-year vision and a
5-year action plan (2015-2020) for the development of the health and disability Kaiāwhina workforce.
The report highlights the positive progress made along with the areas where improvement is still required due to negative impacts and unintended consequences of the settlement on the residential aged care, home and community care and disability sectors.
Workforce Intelligence Domain: Advice on the ANZSCO Review of Skills Levels
Accurate and robust workforce data is critical for workforce planning, funding and sustainability.
The issues and challenges with the occupational coding system that is used to ‘tell the story about all occupational groups’ (ANZSCO) were raised with Statistics New Zealand in early 2019 as it is well known in the health and disability sectors, that the current codes
and skills levels do not adequately reflect on the wide range of ‘Care and Support’ roles.
The Workforce Intelligence Network of the Kaiawhina Workforce Action Plan has taken the opportunity to advocate for change and were very pleased to receive news in March 2019 that Statistics New Zealand and the Australian Bureau of Statistics had agreed to establish a joint review of the skill level specifications within ANZSCO.This has provided a significant breakthrough for progressing the Workforce Intelligence actions.
A submission was made by the Workforce Intelligence Network to Statistics New Zealand on 7 June 2019 which clearly advocates for changing the ANZSCO to better reflect the qualification levels and sectors that the Kaiāwhina workforce cover.
Members of the Workforce Intelligence Network come from the Ministry of Health, AUT, Berl, TAS, Te Pou, New Zealand Disability Support Network (NZDSN), New Zealand Aged Residential Care Association (NZACA), Home and Community Health Association (HCHA) and Careerforce.
Career Development Domain: The Qualification Review
The Qualifications Review, led by sector Industry Training Organisation, Careerforce with input from the New Zealand Aged Care Association (NZACA), considered whether the current Health and Wellbeing qualifications at Levels 2, 3 and 4 were fit for purpose. Careerforce reported a general agreement between stakeholders on the current specifications of Level 2 and 3, although feedback indicated some uncertainty on how the Level 2 and 3 qualifications meet the needs of Māori and Pasifika. Level 4 received the most feedback that change was required with a high level of support for an expanded programme moving from 70 to 120 credits.
Chief executive of the NZACA, Simon Wallace says the review has been an important opportunity for the sector to have a say on qualifications in the industry. He believes the quality of engagement has been useful for both aged residential care (ARC) providers and Careerforce. He adds "there is a lot of support for a broadening of the Level 4 programme to reflect not only the enhanced responsibility for
employees at this level, but also to create possible career pathways beyond caregiving and into nursing with the addition of clinical components. With the acute shortage of nurses in ARC, the sector needs to be looking at all options and expansion of Level 4 to provide a nursing pathway is one of them."
Careerforce submitted recommendations to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) in May 2019. Once approved the second stage of review work will consider in more detail the relevancy of the programmes offered under each qualification. New programmes are expected to be available in 2020.
A schedule of qualification reviews is available on the Careerforce website.
The origins of this taonga - this treasure Kaiāwhina
Ngā mihi nui from the Kaiāwhina Workforce Action Plan Programme Team and thank you for continuing to promote the ‘Whakapapa o te Kaiāwhina’ that we profiled in our April e-newsletter.
When we acknowledge the mana of the word we give value to and recognition of the work Kaiāwhina do in their many and varied roles and settings.
The Whakapapa one-page description can be found here
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