About the strategy
We are working with state and territory governments to develop a National Allied Health Workforce Strategy. This responds to a recommendation from the independent review of Australia’s regulatory settings relating to overseas health practitioners final report.
Goals
This strategy will:
- help to address national allied health workforce issues, including the shortage of allied health professionals in Australia
- consider how these issues vary across the allied health sector so we can better align the supply of allied health professionals with current and future needs.
Strategy development
We are developing the strategy in 2 phases:
- Phase 1 will involve collecting evidence, consulting with stakeholders and drafting of the strategy from late 2023 to 2024.
- Phase 2 will seek endorsement of the strategy through the Health Workforce Taskforce, Health Chief Executives Forum, and Health Ministers’ Meeting
We expect to complete the strategy in 2025.
Status
We are currently drafting the Strategy, using evidence we have collected so far from our stakeholders including:
- the first round of public consultation, held between 28 May and 9 July 2024, which sought feedback on the proposed outline of the strategy; and
- outcomes from a series of targeted online forums, held across August and September 2024.
We are placing a strong focus on:
- understanding the overarching factors and reforms that influence allied health workforce supply, demand, safety and quality
- reviewing the relevant policies, strategies and models of care currently in place that impact the allied health workforce
- recognising gaps in allied health data collection.
The draft strategy has been reviewed by the strategy governance groups and Health Workforce Taskforce ahead of a further public consultation, now available on our Consultation Hub.
Have your say
Stakeholder consultation is an important part of developing the National Allied Health Workforce Strategy. Public and targeted stakeholder consultations will occur throughout the evidence collection and drafting phase. This will help us:
- confirm and build on findings
- test proposed recommendations
- seek input on the structure and content of the strategy.
The first public consultation has closed.
The second round of consultation is now closed. This was a series of targeted stakeholder forums for allied health professionals and consumers of allied health. We worked directly with stakeholder organisations to facilitate these forums.
The third round of public consultation is now open via our consultation hub. This is open from 20 January to 3 March 2025.
Learn more
To keep up to date with our work on the strategy and other allied health-related work, subscribe to our allied health sector updates.
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