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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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What hinders and what helps?
— searching for solutions to mature aged unemployment and the residential aged care workforce crisis | | Author(s) | Kay Price, Pamela Alde, Chris Provis |
| Journal title | Australasian Journal on Ageing, vol 23.4, December 2004 |
| Publisher | Blackwell Publishing, December 2004 |
| Pages | pp 177-183 |
| Source | http://www.cota.org.au / http://www.blackwellpublishingasia.com |
| Keywords | Unemployment ; Employment of older people ; Middle aged ; Care home staff ; Social surveys ; Australia. |
| Annotation | This paper provides an overview of a South Australian research project to investigate strategies to tackle the workforce crisis currently threatening the provision of health and residential care services to Australia's rapidly ageing population. The project's rationale was the need to understand why, with high levels of sustained mature age unemployment (and under-employment) and the urgent need for staff in residential and community aged care, mature aged people do not consider, or are unable to undertake, further education and training to gain the necessary skills to work in this area. This descriptive and exploratory study used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Informed by a critical review of the literature, data were collected from interviews with four participants aged 40+ as they undertook specific education and training in aged care services, and from a survey of 145 randomly selected mature aged unemployed and under-employed people. Findings suggest that, for the mature aged unemployed person, age represents the single most significant barrier in obtaining paid employment. Evidence also exists to suggest a positive relationship between ageing and a person's willingness to undertake formal education, and/or to consider the work of caring for older people as a reasonable carer option. However, the extent to which other factors such as health, time spent in unemployment, type of qualification, and the psychological impact of being unemployed might have had an effect, remains unclear. The study challenges us to rethink how we value ageing, mature aged unemployment and education, and care work. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050202215 A |
| Classmark | WH6: GC: SE: QRM: 3F: 7YA |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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