eldercare workforce

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the paid workers who provide formal care and support services to older adults in residential aged care facilities, assisted living communities, home care settings, adult day programmes, and hospital and rehabilitation contexts, including nursing home aides, home health aides, personal care attendants, geriatric nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, and others whose work sustains the daily life of frail older adults; eldercare workforces in most developed countries are characterised by low wages relative to the skill and emotional labour required, high rates of workforce instability including turnover and burnout, and significant reliance on immigrant workers and workers of colour whose contributions are systematically undervalued; the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the consequences of these conditions in catastrophic mortality among nursing home residents in many countries and in the departure of exhausted care workers from the sector; the projected growth in the number of frail older adults requiring care over coming decades makes the development of an adequately sized, trained, and compensated eldercare workforce one of the most pressing social policy challenges in aging societies