Juniper’s Gerdewoonem Residential Aged Care Home replaces FIFO nurses with migrant workers under DAMA

A Kununurra aged care service home which used to rely on fly-in fly-out workers to care for their residents has found a better way to manage the health sector skill shortage. Since January last year Juniper has employed 13 permanent staff at Gerdewoonem Residential Aged Care Home and their community centre through a skilled migration scheme. Through the Kimberley’s Designated Area Migration Agreement (DAMA), workers have come from Nepal, Bhutan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe to fill the crucial care and support worker positions. Many health providers in the Kimberley, and other parts of regional WA, rely on agencies to fill staff shortages at enormous cost. WA Country Health Service (WACHS) spent $125 million on contracting 578 agency nurses to fill vacancies in regional hospitals in the 2022-2023 financial year. Juniper executive director residential Dan Norgard said using DAMA workers was not about saving money, as the wage costs were the same, instead it was about providing residents with consistent, quality care. “DAMA made a difference for us by providing care workers that are generally full-time people that our customers can build a relationship with and that they can provide good, stable care.” Mr Norgard said. “That means for our customers they have a familiar person coming to see them, they get to build their relationships. They get to yarn and talk things through. There’s a degree of comfort that comes with the provision of personal care.” Before the DAMA workers, Juniper was using a rotational staffing model where employees were flown in from Perth to work for between two weeks and a few months. Juniper also used labour hire to fill roles short term. Mr Norgard said one of the cost benefits of using the DAMA workers was less time and money spent on orientation and cultural training. “By having staff, as I say, that are living and working in community, it helps, it eases that orientation process,” he said. The Kimberley DAMA is an arrangement with the Federal Government which allows employers in the North West to hire overseas workers in a broader range of occupations than is usually eligible through various skilled migration avenues. It also gives employers concessions in a range of areas including experience, age, proficiency at English and salaries. It was established by the East Kimberley Chamber of Commerce and Industry two years ago to address local skills shortages and has now expanded across the Kimberly, employing 221 overseas workers in hospitality, tourism, retail, aged and child care and agriculture. Mr Norgard said the DAMA was a good example of how collaboration between local authorities, State and Federal Government can help regional areas have access to consistent quality health care.