Steps to improve aged and community care training
As part of ongoing efforts to maintain world class vocational education and training standards across Australia, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) today released a major review of training in the aged and community care sector.
The review makes 10 recommendations to help improve training in the sector including a stronger focus on regulatory scrutiny, upgrades to training packages and standards, and the development of benchmarks for the amount of learning required.
ASQA Chief Commissioner Chris Robinson said that although the review found almost 80 per cent of registered training organisations offer good quality aged care training, 20 per cent were not compliant with at least one of the national standards.
“There are two key implications arising out of the review into the aged and community care sector,” Mr Robinson said.
“The first is that some people undertaking aged and community care training are not being properly skilled due to poor knowledge understanding and application of the required national standards by some providers.
“The second is that the registered training organisations delivering high quality training programs are up against some unfair competition from those RTOs offering cheap and unrealistically short training programs.”
The review found most non-compliant registered training organisations in the sector were offering training programs that were too short to impart all the required skills and failing to adequately assess students against the required competencies.
Mr Robinson said ASQA will work with the Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council and other key stakeholders to address the issues identified and implement the recommendations.
A management committee of key aged and community care training stakeholders oversaw the review, which was one of three reports released by ASQA today. The other two reviews targeted induction safety courses for workers on Australian construction sites and the marketing practices of registered training organisations.
Copies of the reviews are available at the ASQA website.