You will all recall
that, in the Budget brought down in May, the State Government
announced it would put an additional $604 million into the
community sector over four years. This was great news and meant
that eligible community services organisations, including
Senses, would receive an increase of 15% on our government
contracts. The primary purpose of this was to increase the wages
of direct care staff across the sector and to deal with the
sustainability of the organisations.
In June I advised you
that I planned to apply
80% of the funding to
staff conditions including wages, support, supervision, training
and resources. I said at that time that this would mean pay
rises but that these would not be equal across Senses
Foundation. I said that I planned to put the majority of the
money I allocated to wage increases, into support workers,
because their wages are very low and need to be addressed as a
priority. I also needed to deal with our therapists as they were
fast falling behind others in the sector and we would not be
able to fulfill our contracts if these were not dealt with.
It
has taken the Government a little time to allocate the
additional funding however now it has arrived.
I
am pleased to announce that I have applied 86% of the money we
have received from the government solely to wage increases, that
these are effective immediately and are back dated to the 1st
July 2011. The pay increases are as follows.
Support Workers 11%
Therapists 6%
All
other staff 4.5%
Coupled with the 3% increase that everyone received in November
last year I hope that you will agree this is a pretty good
result in this financial year.
The
Finance Department is putting through the back pay this week.
Debbie Karasinski
Chief Executive Officer
3rd October 2011
SENIOR
MANAGEMENT GROUP UPDATE 15th November 2011
The Senior Managers including David Snape, Senior Manager
Corporate Services and Elvira Edwards, Senior Manager Client
Services meet with me each month in what is appropriately called
the Senior Managers Group meeting. Following is a summary of
what was discussed at the September SMG meeting......click
here to read the full report.
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