New qualifications proposed in care

This is an ideal opportunity for aged care providers to provide hands on experience and valuable onsite training for potential employees. It may provide valuable benefits not only for students, but also residents/care recipients and aged care providers, as students are better equipped with the skills they need to enter the workforce.

The Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council (CS&HISC) is undertaking a major project to review the Certificate III and IV in Aged Care, scheduled to be completed next June.

It has been proposed that the Certificate III in Aged Care be merged with the Certificate III in Home and Community Care and Certificate III in Disability.

The new Certificate III in Individual Support has a core set of competencies and offers specialisations in Ageing Support, Home and Community Support as well as Disability. The qualification offers flexibility for a learner to choose a range of electives to meet their job role, however also maintains the integrity of the current qualifications in that a learner can undertake either one or two specialisations, which would be identified on their transcript.

Qualifications at the Certificate IV level have also been merged but in this case it is only the Certificate IV in Aged Care being merged with the Certificate IV in Home and Community Care, the new qualification titled as the Certificate IV in Ageing Support.

The language used across all relevant units has been updated to reflect current terminology and service provision.

A significant change being proposed across both the new Certificate III in Individual Support and Certificate IV in Ageing Support is the requirement for a learner to undertake 120 hours of work as part of each qualification.

If implemented, this change will need to be supported by the industry to ensure that learners have access to work placements where they can apply skills and knowledge learnt.

For more information on the review project, visit the CS&HISC website.