Social services desperate for caregivers

Social services for the elderly and disabled are struggling to find caregivers, despite rising unemployment.

Salvation Army social services director Major Campbell Roberts says "hundreds of jobs" are still available for caregivers around the country.

"We could provide a lot more service if we had more workers," he said. "The money is actually there to provide the services."

But the situation is changing fast, and some areas are already reporting that chronic labour shortages have turned into queues for jobs in the past two months.

On Auckland's North Shore, the home care co-ordinator for Home Choice Senior Care, Henner Battenhaussen, said: "Since late last year we haven't had to advertise at all. We have been absolutely overwhelmed with phone calls from people referred to us and just random people ringing up looking for jobs."

Retirement Villages Association director John Collyns and Howick Baptist Healthcare chief executive Val Sugrue both reported more registered nurses returning to the workforce because they or their husbands had lost other jobs.

Auckland Kindergarten Association manager Tanya Harvey said more families were looking for fulltime childcare because mothers were going back to work out of fear that their husbands might be made redundant.

"They're pre-emptively trying to assure the family's future," she said.

ASB Community Trust chief executive Jennifer Gill said social services could employ many of the people being made redundant if funding could be made available for aged care, childcare, environmental clean-ups, insulating houses and upgrading community facilities such as marae and sports clubs.

Despite its own financial crisis, her trust is continuing with a two-year, $10 million commitment to work with other agencies to install insulation and other energy-saving measures in low-income houses in Auckland and Northland.

"Starship [Hospital] can show that children with multiple admissions for respiratory illnesses have had their health turned around," Ms Gill said. "One night in Starship pays for retrofitting a house."

Mike Underhill, of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, said insulation subsidies to low-income earners were capped at $19 million a year, but the work could be ramped up quickly if the budget was boosted.

In aged care, National promised before the election to spend $18 million on top of inflation in the financial year starting in July to help resthomes and private hospitals raise nurses' pay closer to public hospital levels.

Private hospitals spokesman Martin Taylor said caregivers' pay rates had already risen 22 per cent since 2005, but still averaged only $13.69 an hour late last year.

Average rates are higher in Auckland, but some services reported continued staff shortages. Selwyn Foundation chief executive Duncan Macdonald said his caregivers earned between $13.50 and $16.50, but he still had vacancies for 10 to 15 fulltime-equivalent caregivers and nurses.

"Staff turnover is starting to drop quite quickly," he said. "The industry traditionally has turnover of 29 to 39 per cent. I think we are down to about 18 to 20 per cent."

Trish Brosnan, of the country's largest private home care company, Healthcare of NZ, said she still had caregiver vacancies in Auckland, Waikato, Wellington and Christchurch, but positions in most of the lower North Island were full.

"We have places where we have waiting lists to join the organisation. That was not the case six months ago."

Salvation Army Home Care chief executive Meng Cheong was short of staff in Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga, but not in Rotorua or Paeroa.

"Currently we have to reluctantly turn work away because we don't have enough support workers," he said.

Bronwen Foxx, of Whakatane's Disability Resource Centre Trust, which provides home care for 600 mostly elderly clients in the eastern Bay of Plenty, is short of 10 part-time caregivers in Whakatane but has no vacancies in Opotiki or Kawerau.

She has noticed only "a slight increase in walk-ins off the street for recruitment".