Why Are Aged Care Workers Leaving Agencies in Australia?

Australia is running out of aged care workers. The sector response has been to call it a workforce crisis and ask the government for more funding. What it actually is, is a pay and conditions crisis that has been building for decades and is now producing the inevitable result.

The agency model and what it costs workers

Most aged care workers in Australia find their clients through an agency. The agency charges the family or the government package $85 to $115 per hour for a support worker. The worker receives $30 to $35. The agency keeps $50 to $65 per hour -- not for providing care, but for being the middleman between the worker and the family.

The agency justifies this by providing the client pipeline. Without the agency, the worker has no clients. With the agency, the worker has clients but loses most of what those clients pay. That is the trap, and most workers stay in it because the alternative -- finding your own clients, managing your own bookings, chasing your own invoices -- feels impossible.

The roster problem

Agency rosters mean a different client every day, or multiple clients across a shift, with no continuity and no relationship. Aged care workers trained because they wanted to care for people. The agency model turns that into a logistics operation -- get in, provide the minimum required service, get out, move to the next address.

Continuity matters enormously in aged care. A worker who knows their client -- their routine, their preferences, their history, what upsets them and what helps -- provides fundamentally better care than a stranger following a care plan. Agencies cannot offer continuity. Their model does not allow for it.

The burnout

Aged care worker burnout is not a personality problem. It is the predictable output of a system that pays poorly, provides no consistency, offers minimal professional support and asks workers to absorb the emotional weight of caring for vulnerable people at the end of their lives -- while keeping most of the money the client pays.

What workers are choosing instead

The pattern across the sector is consistent. Experienced aged care workers leave agencies not because they have stopped wanting to care for elderly Australians, but because the agency model has made it impossible to do that work with any dignity or financial stability.

The alternative that addresses both problems is private in-home care through a structured platform. One family. Consistent visits. Better pay. The platform provides the client pipeline -- the only thing the agency was providing -- without taking most of the money to do it.