When Shane White lost his job making flyscreen doors during the pandemic last year, a friend suggested he would make a good disability care worker.
Shane White has become a disability support worker after losing his manufacturing job in the pandemic.The disability sector is pushing for more employees in industries hit by COVID-19 to consider a new career in disability services to help tackle a desperate shortage of workers. Australia needs an extra 120,000 disability support workers according to the peak national disability body.Fiona Macdonald, a senior research fellow at RMIT, said the shift to an hourly funding model under the NDIS had resulted in an increasingly casualised workforce.
General manager of operations Laura Green called on the federal government to address the labour shortage. “It's really hard for us to commit to a worker when we don't know year on year if the client’s funding will stay the same,” Ms Green said.