Appropriateness Of Training

“Everyone has the ability to increase resilience to stress. It requires hard work and dedication, but over time, you can equip yourself to handle whatever life throws your way without adverse effects to your health. Training your brain to manage stress won't just affect the quality of your life, but perhaps even the length of it.” - Amy Morin

The most common disability training offered by the training providers is the Certificate III Individual Support (Disability) and Certificate IV (Disability). Some providers additionally offered diploma level qualifications, but the changes that had occurred to the VET system in 2016 resulted in there no longer being any current disability specific diploma qualification.

A majority of the disability service providers have stated they require this qualification among their prospective employees or for them to be in the process of working towards a Certificate III qualification. Indeed for some organisations, this requirement was mandatory and the basis on which workers could be recruited.

However, for other service providers, particularly in regional areas where recruitment was more difficult, formal qualifications were not always required. In cases where they were presented with a “good candidate”, the service providers instead stipulated that the worker must have some relevant life experience, the “right values” and be prepared to undertake Certificate III training within a set period of time. Challenges with regional recruitment, including competition for good workers with other provider organisations meant some providers were prepared to pay to train support workers if necessary.

A few service providers reported having no requirements for formal qualifications among their disability support workers. They preferred to rely on organisational ‘culture,’ in house training and recruiting workers with relevant ‘soft skills’ as a way of ensuring their staff have appropriate skills to support client needs and provide good quality care.

Certificate level qualifications were offered on both a full-time and part-time basis. Full-time courses were aimed primarily at new entrants with no previous experience in the sector, typically ran for six months and were comprised of face to face teaching as well as an industry placement. Part-time training was targeted at people who were already employed within the sector and were balancing their current work with formal study.

Just as the duration of training varied, so did the mode. All training comprised a face to face and industry placement component; most also incorporated online learning components. However, face to face training was perceived to be of higher quality than online training. The industry placement component of the training was considered essential to ensure students obtain the appropriate skills and competencies to work in the sector.

Some of the disability service providers who reported requiring their workers to obtain Certificate III or IV qualifications once employed by the organisation, indicated that they offered support to their workers to acquire these qualifications. This support included arranging shifts to accommodate the training, providing study leave and, in some cases, contributing to the cost of the certificate. Providers who were more likely to contribute to the cost of training were typically also RTOs. However, and as will be discussed below, the NDIS is perceived to have negatively impacted on the ability of these organisations to continue to support workers to undertake Certificate level training.

According to a majority of service providers, organisational induction was the most important in-house training received by their workers. This training was described as a comprehensive process mandated for all new staff, which educates the workers on the organisations’ broad policies and procedures and covers ‘on-the-job’ context such as health and safety, working in clients’ homes away from an organisational base, dealing with problem behaviours and also the overall context in which they will be working with clients. Peer/buddy shifts or supervised shifts were also noted as an important part of this induction process. Induction, peer/buddy shifts and ongoing supervision were also seen by respondents as providing an opportunity to assess the worker’s application of their qualifications and identifying potential training needs. Spot checks and feedback from clients was another way that some of the service providers tailored their training.

Training covered technical competencies (such as manual handling, medication training, leadership skills and behaviour support); communications skills; skills specific to working in particular areas of the disability sector (such as group activities, supported accommodation) and skills specific to working with particular client groups (such as older people with disability).

Communication skills were seen to be of central importance to disability training. These skills were considered to be fundamental to the role of the disability support worker ensuring that students/workers were able to advocate for a person with disability, to interact with them in an effectual manner, and provide appropriate person centred care and support.

While gaps in skills and training were acknowledged, Registered Training Organisations and potential disability support workers are confident that tthey are receiving the training necessary to perform their duties well.

While general satisfaction regarding training is high, gaps have been identified in the skills and competencies incorporated in current disability training. Disability specific skill gaps were identified, as was the need for additional training for disability support workers in technical skills, communication skills, soft skills and the NDIS.

Formal qualifications are perceived to have limited scope for preparing workers for ‘on the job’ contexts or working in uncontrolled environments such as clients’ homes and public spaces. These issues were particularly pertinent for students with no previous experience with disability work.

Disability service providers, workers and people with disability – have identified specific gaps in the technical skills and training of workers that needed to be rectified in order to improve the quality of disability support provision particularly for people with complex care needs.

The key skills perceived to be lacking were around medication administration, behaviour support, safe manual handling techniques and mental health/dual diagnosis.

The need for development of strong communication skills was a further training gap commonly identified. This included developing and utilising active listening skills and, more specifically, learning strategies for interacting with people with communication difficulties. Some disability support workers noted that training in social skills and how to interact with clients and co-workers would be useful. Workers raising this training need included staff from CALD backgrounds and a disability support worker with Autism wishing to develop their own social interaction skills.

The soft skills possessed by disability support workers was a further area which was found to be in need of development. Particular soft skills which were valued by respondents included having patience when assisting people with disability to develop their independent living skills, using initiative to suggest activities, and having good common sense in order to appropriately respond to care needs and behaviours.

Many training organisations believed that the roll out of the NDIS has heralded massive changes to the disability sector, its workforce and the skills and capabilities required of the workforce. However, has been reported that the current VET courses did not adequately address policy changes associated with the roll out of the NDIS. Consequently many disability support workers were seen as being unaware of how the NDIS works and, more generally, of the huge historic shift that had entailed in the provision of supports to people with disability in Australia. It was therefore considered to be important that understanding of the NDIS be incorporated into disability training courses.

Concerns have been raised about the quality of Disability training that was currently being provided and the extent to which it adequately skilled students for their future employment. Several family carers raised concerns about current approaches to encourage unemployed people to pursue disability support training and the stringency of completion requirements for this training.

The decision to replace the Certificate III in Disability with a common qualification across aged care and disability was predominantly viewed in a negative light by many training organisations. A training package review conducted by the Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council (CSHISC) led to a recent change in the entry level qualifications for disability support. At the Certificate III level, a new general qualification, the Certificate III in Individual Support, replaced the former Certificate IIIs in Aged Care, Home and Community Care, and Disability. Under the new qualification, a student completes core subjects, and can then choose to specialise in up to two areas: ageing, home and community or disability.

The qualifications were brought together under the understanding that common skill sets exist between the aged care and disability sectors and to enable greater flexibility for workers to move between the two sectors. However, this rationale was disputed in the interviews with training organisations. Little workforce movement was felt to be occurring between the two sectors and the majority of disability providers themselves were perceived to consider the two workforces to be quite separate.

Specific concerns were raised that the combination of the qualifications did not adequately address the difference between the sectors in terms of where the care was largely being undertaken (in the community versus a residential setting). It was also noted that the ethos and training models of the disability and aged care sectors were different; with the disability sector having a greater focus on developing independence and having an employment and vocational orientation.

For the small minority of providers delivering both aged and disability services the changes to VET were viewed positively as they utilised their support workers across both client groups. These providers did not believe there were significant differences in basic skills required and disability specific training could be delivered if required.

Feedback from disability support workers indicated that many were dissatisfied with the quality of certificate level qualifications believing, that the training did not adequately equip them to work in the disability sector. Limitations identified included course content not reflecting the ‘real world’ of disability care work and not providing enough focus on disability. It is important to note though that the disability support workers interviewed for this study had undertaken their training prior to the introduction of the new Certificate III in Individual Support. It will therefore be important in the future to evaluate satisfaction levels of those undertaking the new Certificate III qualifications across both disability and aged care in order to identify specific gaps in that training.

Variability in the quality of disability courses was perceived to be largely attributable to poor training provision by private RTO’s, with many training organisations narrating accounts of rogue RTO’s and the student loan scandals.

Poor quality training provision was said to be resulting in an increasing proportion of disability service providers opting to employ unqualified workers and provide internal training to their workforce themselves.

Quality was also associated with the mode and duration of the training. Many training providers noted the financial need to offer some components of their courses online, in order to reduce costs and increase access for those in regional and remote locations. However, it was acknowledged that some training providers offered more components online than face to face, negatively impacting on the quality of training. Quality was also associated with the duration of the course being offered. Certificate level qualifications that were of a short duration were viewed as being of poor quality.

Another aspect of training quality related to the skills and industry experience of the trainers. Trainers/teachers with current or recent industry experience were considered important in ensuring the currency of the skills and competencies they aimed to deliver to their students.