Bridging borders: Sydney aged care home empowers Nepalese recruitment

When Ramila Pokharel arrived in Australia almost 25 years ago from Nepal with her husband and two-year-old son there was no clear path through the ranks of aged care. 

A qualified registered nurse back home, she started as a personal care assistant like many migrants who come to Australia seeking new opportunities for themselves and their families. 

She soon qualified as a registered nurse and over the next 20 years progressed into management roles. More recently, Ms Pokharel joined Twilight Aged Care where she is the facility manager for its Glengarry home in Mosman, Sydney.

This role has enabled Ms Pokharel to help bring the next generation of Nepalese workers to Australia through a unique initiative that could pave the way for a new residential aged care home in Kathmandu, almost 10,000 kilometres away.

Searching for a secure workforce

Twilight Aged Care’s history traces back to the early 1910s when Lady Mayoress Miss Florence Clarke and a group of Sydney’s most influential women joined together to create a home that would support ‘educated, refined women in their later years’ who had perhaps lost their husbands, never married or were financially vulnerable. 

Twilight House officially opened at Mosman in 1915 and over the years the independent not-for-profit organisation evolved into five residential care homes with over 300 staff.

More recently, it has been on the hunt for new workforce additions. The search has its roots in the COVID-19 pandemic era when turnover ramped up and workers left the sector.

“You’d be lying if you didn’t have workforce challenges. We were turning over about 70% of our staff. That can be a bit soul-destroying,” shared Edward Harriott, Twilight’s Human Resources Manager. 

With more than two-thirds of the workforce having overseas roots, visa conditions have regularly impacted roster consistency and stability. 

As staff juggled multiple jobs and responsibilities, or were even forced to relocate, there was a renewed focus on finding a secure workforce that could be relied on for years, not just months. 

At first, Twilight sponsored some of its international staff so they could have a direct path to residency in Australia. Seven have already achieved this goal, meaning they can now work full-time and provide important continuity of care to residents. 

However, the team still wanted to grow the talent pool. With a significant portion of its workforce having Nepalese roots, Twilight identified the 31 million-strong South Asian nation’s untapped potential. 

What followed was a collaboration between Twilight’s leadership team and Deepak Khadka, the former Honorary Consulate General of Nepal. He was, and remains, a director at Sydney education provider Crown Institute of Higher Education. 

That shared knowledge laid the foundation for Twilight’s plans to travel to Nepal, provide Certificate III in Individual Support (Ageing and Disability) training and bring fully qualified staff to Australia. 

Taking the training to Nepal

This is where things truly take the next step. Rather than just training staff when they arrive in Australia, Twilight fully invested in providing Certificate III training in Kathmandu. The organisation even trained up four of its senior registered nurses, including Ms Pokharel, to deliver the training themselves in Australia and Nepal so the new staff understand Twilight’s family model of care. 

Mr Harriott and Cyanne Vassila, Twilight’s People and Process Coordinator, have also invested plenty of time supporting candidates in Sydney and Kathmandu. The pair travelled to Nepal four times and the most recent occasion was the graduation ceremony for their 16 successful students. 

Before that point, Ms Vassila screened over 60 applicants virtually while the pair interviewed all 60-plus participants over five days during one of their trips. 

“We wanted candidates with a genuine interest in taking care of older people. We took the approach that it’s not a guaranteed sponsorship. We didn’t talk about sponsorship to begin with,” Ms Vassila said. 

“We were talking about the course. Why do you want to do this training and do you have a passion for working in aged care? That’s what you need. It wasn’t about coming to Australia.”

A series of psychometric tests that measure skills and attributes related to workplace performance were also conducted to help see how the candidates would align with their new managers here in Australia. 

“I wanted to make sure they’re placed in the best work environment. We have five different managers with different personalities and management styles so these tests would help us place the staff in the right home for them,” Ms Vassila added. 

The final Nepal trip also featured hour-long interviews with the graduating class. Ms Vassila was blown away by the responses because ‘What they knew about aged care was better than the majority of the interviews we do in Australia.’

“That was the validating part. Our managers who have all worked in aged care for a long time said ‘I can’t believe these people have never worked in aged care in Australia’. Their standard is so high,” Mr Harriott chimed in.

“We’re fully confident in these staff members coming over and with the right support they’re going to hit the ground running. Everyone in aged care is talking about ‘How do I get good staff, how do I get a committed long-term workforce?’ We’re pretty sure we’ve cracked the code.”

The youngest in the cohort is 19 and with their short-term future locked in at Twilight Aged Care, there are plans for long-term career progression into nursing roles. Meanwhile, several students have already promised to give back to their community, an endeavour that Twilight supports wholeheartedly. 

“We asked ‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ and they said ‘I want to set up my own aged care home in Nepal. I want to go back and provide quality and knowledge for the Nepalese system’. It was tearjerking,” Mr Harriott said. 

“We had some of the parents speak at the graduation ceremony in Kathmandu and they said ‘This is an amazing opportunity but we want this opportunity to be for Australia and Nepal. We want you to come back and share those skills.’”

And that is the plan. Twilight’s Nepalese contact, Mr Khadka, has acquired land for a new residential care home in Kathmandu. 

While it is early days, Ms Vassila hopes the home would provide locals with high-standard care and give their international recruits somewhere to complete their placement. They would also have the chance to learn the Twilight model of care before moving to Australia. 

She even floated the idea of staff and resident exchanges to provide invaluable life experiences. 

“We’re interested in not just taking from Nepal but giving back,” she said. 

The next generation

Giving back to the community is a recurring theme in this story. New opportunities in Australia allowed Ms Pokharel to help her family while working in aged care. 

“When the recruits come they will work for us but they will also help their family back home. That’s what we did,” she shared.

“My family, we didn’t have a lot of money. My parents were in a village with Maoist issues – political problems – in Nepal. My dad was a school principal and they were targeting the teachers. He couldn’t live in the Gorkha village so he had to migrate to Chitwan. I bought him the land, I built a house for him. I worked hard here to help.”

Ms Pokharel’s personal and professional experience made her the perfect candidate to travel to Kathmandu and train the next generation of aged care workers. She said there is plenty of excitement amongst staff and residents and she’s pleased to have such high-quality people joining the team. 

“When we went to Nepal we found good candidates. They worked hard and we got the cream of the crop. It was a good experience going there and finding the right people. They will be much more knowledgeable going into our homes after completing their education,” she explained. 

Ms Pokharel will also help the next generation by accommodating them at her home until they secure permanent housing. She’s even recruited her brother to spare a bed or two.

With a willingness to help communities in Australia and Nepal, Twilight Aged Care hopes its efforts will benefit other aged care providers, too. Ms Vassila said the goal is to allow other providers to access the talent pool they’re creating 

This willingness to help others and give back to the community in Australia and Nepal is a. Twilight Aged Care is hopeful of spreading the light, too, by one day enabling other providers to tap into the talent pool they’re creating.