Calls for a mental health hotline for aged care workers who experience verbal abuse

The CEO of a home care organisation is campaigning for the creation of mental health support services for aged care staff in the lead-up to the federal election.

My Homecare CEO, Stuart Miller, recently revealed to 9News that many of his staff are being abused by family members of care recipients due to frustrations over delays to in-home care services as a result of COVID-19-related staff shortages.

“The situation with staff turnover with COVID-19 isolation means we have to triage who gets the services,” Miller said.

"We're very conservative and we have to protect these people, we can't afford to send a staff member in there with a sniffle."

After working in aged care for eight years, My Homecare case manager Megan Mainwaring said that the pressures facing herself and other staff members are becoming unbearable.

“You have to deal with clients yelling at you because you were supposed to be there two hours ago, but you can’t be there on time because you have so many clients and not enough staff to cover it,” Mainwaring explained.

“The clients are frustrated because they don’t get to go out and their families aren’t coming around, they can get quite verbally aggressive.”

In addition to a mental health hotline, Miller believes that aged care staff should receive resilience training to better understand how they can deal with confrontation.

"When Megan spoke about being abused, it happens every single day, and it's hard to get abused and want to come back the next day," he said.

“So the government needs to reach into providers and say we’ll offer these free services to build into your team meetings, care manager meetings, field meetings, so we can give you some of the tips and tools for your staff to get through these issues,” he shared.

Miller has also called on the government to increase the pay of aged care workers, citing increased living costs and higher-paying care roles as factors exacerbating worker shortages across the aged care sector.

He also revealed that My Homecare has been trying to relieve the financial pressures of rising fuel costs by supplying home care staff with fuel cards.

“People doing very similar work in the disability sector are getting paid 15% more so it’s not surprising when people go to disability,” Miller added.

Calls for increases in pay and working conditions in the aged care sector have reached a fever pitch in recent weeks, highlighted by staff strikes across the country last Tuesday.