The Aged Care Assistant Employment Program

LASA in partnership with Altura Learning and Dash Group is offering a national redeployment program to train and place large numbers of short-term employees who have been displaced from other sectors (such as tourism, hospitality and retail) to support the existing aged care workforce.

To maintain continuity of care, the temporary Aged Care Assistant role has been created to provide support with daily living activities and free up existing staff to focus on critical healthcare.

Organisations who employ Aged Care Assistants, will also be provided with tools to ensure the people undertaking these roles are providing high quality, safe services.

Scope of the Aged Care Assistant Role

The Aged Care Assistant role is designed to assist staff and complete duties that require only a small amount of essential training to ensure continuity of care. This role is not designed to replace any existing role, rather it will provide on-the-floor assistance when the demands on current staff have increased.

The role will provide assistance with daily living activities that are not intimate, specialised, or health-related in nature, and will likely include:

• Assistance with meal distribution, preparation, and supervision
• Assistance with mobilising, including the use of a wheelchair
• Assistance with non-intimate hygiene (e.g. brushing teeth and hair, face and hand hygiene)
• Social assistance and simple recreational activities
• Assistance with bed making
• Distribution of clean linen
• General administrative duties

Organisations may choose to provide Aged Care Assistants with additional on-the-job training to assist staff with housekeeping, catering or laundry duties.