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The Future Supply of Caregivers for the Elderly: Should Australia and New Zealand look to the Pacific?

Other

Event details

Seminar

Date & time

Wednesday 18 November 2009
9.00am–4.00pm

Venue

Seminar Room 4, Crawford School of Public Policy, #132 Lennox Crossing, ANU

Speaker

Various

Contacts

Sally Carlin
6125 0178
There are limited placed available for this event. If you are interested in attending please contact Sally Carlin.

Australia and New Zealand have an ageing population and the number of people requiring some form of paid care is projected to dramatically increase. The care can range from occasional help in the house with cleaning through to full scale care in a residential home setting. While trained nurses and other registered health professionals will form part of this caregiver workforce, many of the caregivers for the elderly are lower skilled workers.

Research undertaken in both countries suggests that it is highly likely that the local labour supply will be insufficient to meet this demand. There are good historical and ongoing development reasons for Australia and New Zealand to look to the Pacific, including Melanesia, as one possible major source of such labour.

Against a backdrop of demographic projections in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, the aim of this forum is to consider possible labour market and migration policy responses to the forecast shortages of carÐegivers for the elderly. There will be a series of papers presented with adequate time set aside for discussion.

For further reading we suggest a recently published article by Paul Callister, Juthika Badkar and Jessie Williams in the Pacific Economic Bulletin Volume 24 Number 3 (2009) - available online at: http://peb.anu.edu.au/peb/current_issue.php.

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