Submission

Executive summary

In the 2023 Financial Year, 23.9 per cent of Mable clients were based in rural and regional areas.
Self employed individuals, including those working via platforms such as Mable, comprise a small but important part of the solution to meet the unprecedented demand facing the care and support economy.
As traditional disability service providers withdraw from rural and regional areas or rely on travelling workforces, place based solutions have become a powerful alternative.
One such solution, Mable’s Community Led Program which started in the town of Bell, has provided much needed aged care and disability services in communities where there were previously few or no home care providers.
Currently in this program, 428 support providers (who are independent contractors) are providing support to 852 clients.
To date some 115,000 hours of care and support have been provided in 51 Community Led communities and more than $8.5 million has been returned to local communities.
Mable supports the opportunity for Registered Training Organisations (RTO’s) to extend place based learning into regional and rural areas offering microcredentials training in skills which support both aged care and disability clients.
So far, 93 support providers across the eight communities in Qld completed the training and Mable expects approximately 84 support providers to complete the training offered across the seven communities in WA.

About Mable

Mable is a health tech platform that offers a complementary approach to traditional aged care at home and disability support models. Mable gives older Australians and people with disability more choice, control and flexibility to shape the care and support they receive in their own homes and community. This choice is made possible by over 17,000 independent

Contractors Providing Valuable and Necessary Care and Support Services via the Platform

Founded in 2014, Mable now operates at some scale with support providers on the platform providing care and support services to over 20,000 people with disability and older Australians. In the 2023 Financial Year, 23.9 per cent of Mable clients were based in rural and regional areas.

Sector Workforce

The workforce challenges for the Care and Support Economy in attracting and retaining staff is well known by all stakeholders. The Australian Government’s Labour Market Insights projects the number of Health Care and Social Assistance Workers will increase by 15.8 per cent to 2.2 million by 2026. Notably, the Department of Social Service found the NDIS alone will require an additional 128,000 support workers by 2025. Self employed individuals, including those working via platforms such as Mable, comprise a small but important part of the solution to meet this unprecedented demand. Notably, during supply constrained periods – particularly during the height of the COVID period – Mable has helped traditional providers across the aged care and disability sector to address this shortfall.

Traditional disability service providers are withdrawing from rural and regional areas citing the challenge of financial unsustainability and the inability to attract staff as the critical reasons for withdrawal. NDS’s latest report shares their members’ concerns for maintaining workforce in smaller towns. Even where services are provided by traditional providers, employed service delivery models – which overwhelmingly involve individuals travelling into regional and rural communities over significant distances – can impose an unreasonable cost burden on participants and affect the viability of the scheme.

A Powerful Solution for Thin Markets

The prevalence of thin markets is one of the most pressing issues in the care and support economy. In both aged and disability care, there are numerous examples of rural, regional and outer-suburban areas that are chronically under-serviced. The advantage of the low-overhead model of Mable and similar platforms is that they lower the barrier of entry to the sector, while ensuring appropriate safeguards, helping to attract community based workforces to address these thin markets.

Mable contends new thinking is needed to enable communities to solve their support needs. Mable is a safeguarded platform connecting many communities, whether they be regional, rural or remote, culturally diverse, or First Nations. Mable’s approach is consistent with well-established models of Asset Based Community Development, where solutions are led by communities leveraging their strengths or assets rather than identifying gaps which are filled from outside. This reduces cost and improves service efficacy.

With the growing success of the Community Led Program, Mable is often approached to help

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communities build their own solution. This is often where there are no local providers, but where there are people in the community willing to help others. Partnerships between Mable and local community groups “aims to address the current challenges associated with receiving appropriate, efficient in-home care by capitalising on local knowledge and relationships, and local workers”.

As the National Rural Health Alliance noted in its submission to the NDIS Review:

   Enabling integrated, locally delivered care and support services, where local needs
   are addressed through community-driven solutions that are responsive to consumer
   needs,  will be central to effective solutions in rural Australia where markets are
   thinner and workforce supply is scarcer.

The possibilities of the local workforce model was supported recently by the NDIS Review investigations into remote and First Nations communities which found models which used local workforces could be more cost effective than those which relied on workers traveling to a community. In a very real sense, the NDIS Review Report called for a community-led approach in remote communities.

5. Mable Community Led Program

In the past three years, Mable has launched a tailored solution to better support rural and regional communities to develop local workforces in order to improve service provision. The Community Led Program which started in the town of Bell, has provided much needed aged care and disability services in small towns and other communities where there were previously few or no home care providers. In many of these communities, there may be few or no traditional providers available. The Community Led program has now spread to 51 communities:

17 in Queensland
32 in Western Australia
1 in NSW
1 in Tasmania.

There are more than a dozen communities that are currently looking to join the program. While this program has a higher proportion of aged care clients (due to the demographics of many rural and regional communities), people with disabilities are starting to benefit from the workforces being built in these communities.

As part of the Community Led Program, 428 support providers (who are independent contractors) are providing support to 852 clients. To date some 115,000 hours of care and support have been provided in 51 Community Led communities and more than $8.5 million has been returned to local communities. These numbers are particularly impressive when it

Skills and Training in the Care Economy

Mable concurs with the recent NDS Review panel vision which encourages more opportunities to progress careers through micro-credentials.

Mable has publicly and regularly advocated for the undertaking of micro credentials or units of competency in order to more easily enable potential personal carers who reside in small communities around Australia to “earn and learn” and upskill.

Many of these workforce challenges are particularly acute in regional and remote communities…Thin markets face more acute and varied challenges in growing a quality workforce. These challenges include a lower supply of providers and workers already operating in these markets, difficult working conditions and barriers to accessing training and support.

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Mable has initiated training opportunities in the towns partnering with RTO’s to solve the problem of lack of workforce training for local workers as training opportunities often do not already exist. Some examples of this include:

In Queensland, place-based micro credential training has been delivered by Skills Generation and Skills Hubs in eight small communities: Charleville, Mossman/Port Douglas, Kilkivan, Etheridge, Esk, Bell, Yarraman, the Southern Moreton Bay Islands, St George and Crows Nest. The modules offered include personal care, manual handling, assistance with medication and infection control, along with First Aid and CPR.
My Flex Training is a partnership to upskill the workforce and provides microcredential training in small communities. Over February, March and April place-based, face-to-face training and assessment will be made available across 10 communities in Western Australia including Pingelly, Brookton, Wickepin, Gingin, Jurien Bay, Williams, Darkan, Mount Barker, Walpole and Boyup Brook.
In Western Australia, Mable has facilitated opportunities for support providers to engage in funded learning and professional development webinars presented by Aged and Community Care Providers Association (ACCPA). The first webinar topic covered Professional Boundaries.
Through a partnership with Skills Generation and TAFE, work booked and delivered through Mable will count towards the 120 placement hours required for completion of The CHC33015 Certificate III in Individual Support (Disability)
So far, 93 support providers across the eight communities in Qld have completed the training and Mable expects approximately 84 support providers to complete the training offered across the seven communities in WA.

Mable’s Community Led Solution is a safe, flexible, adaptable and affordable solution that empowers communities to upskill in a variety of ways in order to proactively solve local care needs while putting income into these communities. Mable has invested significantly in training opportunities to upskill rural and regional workforces and improve service provision in these communities.

Mable is grateful for the opportunity to make this submission and welcome the chance to further assist the Committee in its important work on this matter. mable.com.au 5

Appendix – Maps

![Kununwn;, NORTHERN“·I TERRITORY O winton QUEENSLAND Rockhampton Australia Gunnedah NEW SOUTH WALES Canberra A’¢T Melbourne TASMANIA lsobartq, Go gle My Maps Figure 1. Mable Community Led Towns Australia Cervante,Nambung• •Badgmgarra Wilg;’“ Google My Maps Figure 2 - Community Led Towns in Western Australia Mable.com.au

Figure 2 - Community Led Towns in NSW and Queensland

Community Led Towns (full list as 28 February 2024)

Etheridge (covers Georgetown), Queensland
Yarraman, Queensland
Bell, Queensland
Charleville, Queensland
Thargomindah, Queensland
St George, Queensland
Winton, Queensland
Jandowae, Queensland
Texas, Queensland
Esk, Queensland
Cairns, Queensland
Mossman/Port Douglas/Daintree, Queensland
Southern Moreton Bay Islands, Queensland
Kilkivan, Queensland
Rainbow Beach, Queensland
Rockhampton, Queensland
Gunnedah and surrounds, NSW
Denmark, Western Australia
Pingelly, Western Australia

Boyup Brook, Western Australia
Mount Barker, Western Australia
Walpole, Western Australia
Darkan, Western Australia
Tambellup, Western Australia
Beacon, Western Australia
Williams, Western Australia
Nannup, Western Australia
Lake Grace, Western Australia
Wyalkatchem, Western Australia
Ravensthorpe, Western Australia
Merredin, Western Australia
Beverley, Western Australia
Wickepin, Western Australia
Bruce Rock, Western Australia
Hyden, Western Australia
Quairading, Western Australia
Busselton, Western Australia
Margaret River, Western Australia
Goomalling, Western Australia
Jurien Bay, Western Australia
Moora, Western Australia
Gingin, Western Australia
Dandaragan, Western Australia
Dalwallinu, Western Australia
Kalamunda, WesternAustralia
Mingenew, Western Australia
Mullewa, Western Australia
Hopetoun, Western Australia
Boddington, Western Australia
George Town, Tasmania