Non-Family Based Residential Care Emergency Options for Staff

CSIA, in collaboration with PeakCare, service providers, The Services Union, the Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs and the Fair Work Commission, have developed an emergency framework.

The framework will assist employers operating non-family based care services and their employees to continue delivering service to children and young people during the COVID-19 pandemic period.

It enables organisations more options for meeting the challenges they may face due to the increased workplace risks and staff shortages.

The framework provides supporting guidelines and model COVID-19 Individual Flexible Agreements (IFAs).

These have been developed to assist employers to roster staff, by agreement with employees, for extended shifts of 12-hours or 24-hours in the event that a child or young person in the service needs to isolate or quarantine due to COVID-19.

The model COVID-19 IFAs have also been developed to help employees and employers to more efficiently enter into agreements by outlining standard terms and conditions.

In January 2022 the IFAs and Guidelines were updated to account for two issues:

1. The updated IFAs can be used when there are serious staff shortages due to COVID impacts including where staff need to isolate and quarantine, resulting in impacts to client safety and wellbeing.
2. The updated IFAs provide for paid special leave equivalent to the mandatory period of isolation or quarantine for staff (previously up to 14 days). This is due to the change of mandatory isolation and quarantine from the previous 14 day requirement, and ensures staff are compensated for the actual mandatory period.

Frequently Asked Questions have been developed to further support the implementation of IFAs if/when required.

Your Employees may also like a copy of the The Services Union handout.