The Health and Community Services Workforce Council has been contracted by the Queensland Home and Community Care (HACC) Program to implement several key objectives of the HACC Workforce Skills Development Strategy. The Strategy aims to build the capacity of and meet the skills development needs of Home and Community Care services throughout Queensland.

This project is jointly funded by the Australian Government and Queensland Government through the Home and Community Care (HACC) Program.

Target Group

As it continues to develop, the HACC project will focus on a number of guiding principles to best meet the needs of the target group:

•  Local level engagement

•  Identification and response to state wide issues and needs

•  Recognised and portable skills outcomes

•  Focus on the broad base of both the paid and unpaid workforce

•  Building a learning and development culture across the sector

Regional Capacity Building Model

The HACC strategy is based on a regional engagement model where the Workforce Council is facilitating the development and maintenance of regional network groups around Queensland . The groups will assist in identifying and meeting skills development needs at the regional level.

Under the strategy, these groups will provide a way of ensuring skill development opportunities are being identified and prioritised to best meet the needs of the project target group - HACC direct care workers, managers, professional clinical staff and volunteers in their regions.

The project has identified three main skills development strategies that will guide the implementation and continuing delivery of learning activities:

•  General

•  Indigenous

         •  cultural awareness skill development
         •  Indigenous paid workers and volunteers

•  Dementia

Currently the strategy is in the process of contracting for the delivering of initial learning activities as prioritised by the target group at information sessions being conducted throughout Queensland.

In addition, the regional skills development networks are being established with group inductions and professional development sessions to be offered to members.

The purpose of the HACC Workforce Skills Development Strategy is to build the capacity of HACC regions to define and meet their skills development needs within the HACC sector. The project is based on a regional community engagement model. The Health and Community Services Workforce Council is facilitating the development and maintenance of regional training network groups around Queensland. The project focuses on identifying and meeting training needs at the regional level.

Who is it for?

• Direct Care Workers
• Professional clinical staff
• Managers/Coordinators
• Volunteer Workers

in HACC funded services in Qld.

Regional Network Group?

The purpose of the Regional Network Groups is to make decisions relating to the delivery of HACC funded skills development opportunities within their regions.

This could include:

•  What skill development opportunities are needed;

•  Where and when this skill development opportunity should be provided;

•  How these skill development opportunities should be met;

•  Who should provide this skill development opportunity?

Under the Strategy, the network groups will provide a way of ensuring skill development opportunities are being identified and prioritised regionally. This will more effectively meet the needs of HACC direct care workers, managers, professional clinical staff and volunteers in the regions.

Regional networks groups are currently being established and regional information pages for this project will be added to this web-site at a later date.

Current Staff

The HACC Workforce Skills Development Strategy project currently operates with 2 project officers, 1 administration officer and one Senior Project Officer. Each Project Officer is responsible for a particular region. At present, the team consists of:

Florence Williams	Senior Project Officer
Project Officers
Florence Williams	Penninsula & Central West
Orma Ringberg	Darling Downs, South West
Orma Ringberg	North Qld & North West Qld
Orma Ringberg	Brisbane South
Orma Ringberg	Mackay / Whitsunday
Noela Fry	Sunshine Coast
Noela Fry	Brisbane North
Noela Fry	Wide Bay
Noela Fry	South Coast
Noela Fry	Central , West Moreton
Administration Officer
Aida Villatoro

Project Officer Roles

The Project Officers roles include:

•  Assist with the establishment of regional skills development networks

•  Support regional skills development networks

•  Assist with the formalisation of networks processes

•  Assist with skills development needs identification

•  Empower/facilitate networks to make informed decisions (including education regarding the training system)

•  Dissemination of information about the project

•  Broker learning activites on behalf of the networks

•  Development of brokerage kit including sample RTO contracts

•  Assist training networks to evaluate processes used

•  Assist networks to negotiate the delivery of available publicly funded training at regional level

•  Data collection for:

•  Project

•  Regional training needs/trends

•  Sector training needs/trends

•  Cross sector training needs/trends

•  Sector analysis ( Queensland wide and across regions)

•  Dissemination of information across projects and regions

•  Evaluation

•  Reporting

 

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