Overcoming staff retention and training obstacles were the major themes to emerge from HumanAbility’s Northern Territory Roadshows held in June.
Stakeholders at both the Darwin/Larrakia land and Alice Springs/Mparntwe forums spoke of the hardships in keeping staff within transient populations.
“We’re noticing that there are different issues across the sector, whether that be small or large business, government or non-government,” said Ray Burns, TeamHEALTH.
“Those themes are specific to the transitory nature of the industry, staff retention and then being able to upskill and focus on professional development and career pathways.”
At Alice Springs, participants discussed the impacts of negative media coverage focused on the town and how it was making the issue of staff recruitment and retention challenging. This, along with housing shortages, a decline in tourism and visa changes to long-term stays in Alice Springs, has driven leaders in the local care and support industries to search for new solutions.
“In the breakout sessions we moved into groups and looked at industry-specific questions so that people could come together to share their learnings and their observations with us as well as come up with some solutions for what’s possible for the future,” said Emma King, HumanAbility chief executive.
The HumanAbility team toured care and support workplaces in Alice Springs to discover how industry leaders were tackling the problems of staff retention and training.
At the Gap Community Early Learning Centre, Sheena Russell shared how a strong culture and support for placement students and trainees had led to success in keeping people on staff for longer periods of time.
At Ninti Training Limited, Darren Green and Samantha Turk spoke about the place-based delivery of foundation skills training in remote communities encouraging continued study in Alice Springs.
The importance of remote workers coming together to share insights was underscored by the success of both forums in Alice Springs and Darwin.
“At a personal level what’s rewarding for me in this sector is how it affects people’s lives, making a difference in people’s lives,” said Rob Knight of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
“Especially for me who’s worked and lived in remote (areas) for most of my working career, knowing what the challenges are and how a good functioning human services sector can actually improve the lives of people and community.”
