We need immigrants, agedcare sector says
WELLINGTON: Agedcare providers want urgent changes to immigration rules to plug ‘‘gaping holes’’ in their caregiver and nursing workforces.
It comes as the Ministry of Social Development partners with recruitment company Medcall to train 160 beneficiaries for agedcare jobs.
But the agedcare sector says while that is a start, it represents less than 20% of the caregivers needed each year to fill the gap.
The Government’s initiative follows a successful pilot, launched in Febru ary, that found nearly 40 Auckland beneficiaries jobs in the agedcare sector. Agedcare providers from eight regions will soon recruit another 160 beneficiaries.
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said this was a case of matching demand for jobs with those who wanted work.
But she said noone would be forced into jobs.
‘‘First and foremost, it’s about making sure that MSD clients are going into work that is sustainable and meaningful to them.
‘‘We know that that makes the difference with respect to how long they stay in that employment and whether they end up back on benefit.’’
Aged Care Association chief executive Simon Wallace said the initiative did not address the gaping holes in the caregiving and nursing workforce.
There are 85,000 people over the age of 85, which is expected to increase to 220,000 in 20 years.
To meet that projected growth, he said the aged care sector needed 1000 caregivers a year, each year for the next 10 years.
‘‘Seventy percent of our caregivers are New Zealanders and we employ and train New Zealanders in these roles, but we’ve got a gap and we need to rely on immigration to be able to fill the gap in the workforce,’’ he said.
Mr Wallace said urgent changes were needed to immigration policy so the sector could retain good immigrant workers.
‘‘We train and employ Kiwis but . . . we need a reliance on some immi gration to fill those gaps because we just can’t find New Zealanders to do the roles,’’ he said.
Immigration Minister Iain LeesGalloway said one of the Government’s top priorities was to better match the skills and talents that migrant workers brought with what was needed in the workforce.
He said he would look at whether the changes brought in under the previous government that affected the agedcare sector were still fit for purpose. — RNZ