Community Health win! New agreement comes into operation

Community Health win! New agreement comes into operation

The new Agreement for Allied Health Professionals working in Community Health has been approved by the Fair Work Commission and is now operational.

In addition to improvements in conditions, this Agreement sees Community Health AHPs achieve pay parity with their counterparts in the Public Sector – a very significant step forward.

From a very long list of improvements in the Agreement some of the highlights include:

• Streamlined classification structures in Grades 1 and 2, now 5 instead of 7 years and 4 instead of 5 years respectively
• Accelerated progression for Grade 1 AHPs performing home visits independently
• Automatic progression from Grade 1 to Grade 2 after a year of service at the top of Grade 1
• Improvements to the Overtime & Higher Duties clauses
• New Workload provisions and requirements around advertising of vacancies
• TOIL available for Professional Development Leave and Conference/Seminar Leave able to be cumulative over two years
• Capacity to use a portion of Personal Leave for appointments
• More flexible use of Long Service Leave
• Expansion of Adoption Leave to include Permanent Care Order placements
• 20 days paid Family & Domestic Violence Leave.

If you are a VAHPA Member, you can access the Agreement via your Member Portal. Work is underway to produce a printed version for VAHPA Members.

Grade 1 Changes

Due to the significant improvements in the Grade 1 classification, we remind all Grade 1 Community Health AHPs who haven’t yet done so to complete the survey. Your VAHPA Organiser will then be in touch to check that all the improvements have been applied correctly.

Please pass this survey link on to any Grade 1 staff you know.  

This was a long and often hard-fought fight and it is only through the persistence of VAHPA members that this outcome was achieved. Congratulations to everyone who was involved in this process.

The improvements won by VAHPA Members in Community Health will serve you well in the life of this Agreement and into the future.