Allied Health Workforce and Provider Infrastructure of Thriving Kids

Question

Senator ASKEW: If you could, that would be great. Okay, back to Thriving Kids. This is more now around the workforce. I was just wondering if the department has mapped the allied health workforce and provider infrastructure currently delivering the early intervention services to children and families. Has that been in your considerations? Ms Pulczynski : We are aware that at the moment there is already a very highly skilled workforce that does support children in early childhood, including the allied health workforce. As part of the workforce measures that are funded through the Commonwealth's investment, we will be doing early scoping work so that we can upskill the relevant workforces, including allied health people in the disability sector and early childhood as well. Part of that will also have a modelling component to understand the current resources that the workforce has to support and upskill. Senator ASKEW: That work hasn't been done already in regard to the impact? Ms Pulczynski : I might have to take that one on notice. Senator ASKEW: If you could, it'd be good to know what has been done and what mapping could be provided. These reforms will rely on an existing workforce, as you said, that's already under pressure in many parts of Australia, especially in the regional, rural, remote and outer metropolitan communities where provider choice is limited and recruitment is difficult. Has the department modelled the workforce supervision, training and small business impacts of transitioning children from NDIS funded early intervention into those Thriving Kids or foundational supports? It's similar question but not the same. It's about the regions. Ms Pulczynski : I might have to take that one on notice as well, but I will just note that, across government, there are a number of initiatives for the care and economy workforce. For example, the National Allied Health Workforce Strategy is Australia's first coordinated national plan to strengthen and sustain the allied health workforce, which includes over 300,000 professionals across disciplines like physiotherapy, speech pathology and occupational therapy. There's also HumanAbility and the National Digital Health Capability Action Plan that also support the workforce. Mr Comley: The other thing I would probably add-and I'm not saying we've modelled this precisely-the philosophy of a lot of the delivery on Thriving Kids is to move to more group settings and natural settings, which in effect is more efficient in terms of workers than a much more one-on-one model, which tends to be driven by the way plans are utilised in the NDIS. We do actually think that not just in cities but also in rural and regional areas that may have a benefit in increasing the effective labour supply for these services.

Answer

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Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• DHDA SQ26-004558.pdf (opens in a new tab)