Building Workforce Pipelines for Home Care

Why this mattered

As Australia’s population ages, demand for home care services continues to grow. At the same time, providers across metropolitan, regional and remote communities face increasing challenges attracting, recruiting and retaining the workforce needed to deliver high-quality care.

Recognising that traditional recruitment approaches alone would not meet future demand, the Australian Government established the Home Care Workforce Support Program following the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. The program sought to grow the home care workforce while strengthening pathways into sustainable employment.

HSSO’s Role

HSSO partnered with the Aged & Community Care Providers Association (ACCPA) and Powerhouse Hub to deliver the Home Care Careers program across Victoria and Tasmania.

HSSO led workforce attraction, candidate engagement and recruitment activities, designing practical approaches to connect employers with new entrants to the sector. Working closely with employers, employment services, Registered Training Organisations and community organisations, HSSO developed innovative workforce models that responded to local labour market conditions and addressed barriers to employment.

What We Learned

Home Care Careers demonstrated that workforce shortages cannot be solved through recruitment alone.

Success depended on building strong partnerships, creating local workforce pipelines and designing recruitment approaches that reflected the needs of employers, communities and job seekers.

The program identified practical models that can be adapted across workforce sectors, including:

• Creating recruitment pipelines that attract new entrants rather than competing for existing workers.
• Building local partnerships between employers, education providers, employment services and community organisations.
• Designing place-based recruitment initiatives that respond to regional workforce needs.
• Supporting culturally diverse communities through targeted engagement and culturally appropriate recruitment pathways.
• Creating employment models that engage younger workers and under-represented groups.
• Helping employers rethink recruitment and onboarding to improve long-term workforce retention.

Outcomes

The Home Care Careers program exceeded its workforce attraction targets.

By March 2024, HSSO had:

• conducted 68 recruitment events, job fairs and webinars
• engaged 595 aged care and disability providers
• screened more than 10,000 potential workers
• shortlisted 5,650 candidates
• supported more than 5,000 people into employment.

Beyond these outcomes, the program created practical workforce models that continue to inform workforce attraction, recruitment and partnership approaches across the care sector.

Building on this work

The Home Care Careers program reinforced HSSO’s belief that solving workforce challenges requires more than recruitment campaigns.

Effective workforce solutions are built through collaboration, strong partnerships, practical innovation and a deep understanding of the needs of employers, communities and workers.

The lessons from this program continue to inform HSSO’s work in workforce strategy, organisational capability and workforce system reform across Australia.