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 in early 2025.
We expect to complete the strategy in 2025.
Status
We are gathering and consolidating evidence to support the drafting of the strategy. We will use this to identify:
- common challenges experienced across sectors
- any new and emerging issues to include in the strategy.
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
- analysing workforce issues by each sector in which allied health professionals work.
We sought feedback on the proposed outline of the strategy between 28 May and 9 July 2024. This consultation is now closed. We will use the data from the survey to inform future stakeholder webinars and strategy drafting.
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 is now closed.
A second round of consultation will be held in August 2024. This is series of targeted stakeholder forums for allied health professionals and consumers of allied health. The department is working directly with stakeholder organisations to facilitate these forums.
An additional public consultation will occur towards the end of 2024. This will be via our consultation hub. Please check back for updates on this consultation.
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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