Individual Support Worker in Victoria: Salary and Rates 2024

An individual support worker in her blue uniform taking care of an elderly woman

Are you aspiring to kickstart a meaningful and rewarding career as an Individual Support Worker in Victoria, Australia? Keep reading to explore the occupational scope and earning potential of support workers in aged or disability care. 

A Support Worker’s Scope of Work 

An Individual Support Worker in Victoria plays a crucial role in the healthcare system, providing assistance to people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in need of personal care due to medical conditions. Their duties can range from helping with daily activities such as dressing, bathing, and eating to providing companionship and emotional support. They may also be responsible for medication management, coordinating with healthcare professionals, and helping clients to maintain their independence. 

The responsibilities of an individual support worker require a compassionate nature, patience, and a deep understanding of the unique needs of each client. This work is not only about physical assistance but also about enhancing the quality of life for those they serve. It is a role that demands dedication and a personal touch, making it both challenging and rewarding. 

An individual support worker in her blue uniform taking care of an elderly woman

How Much Does a Support Worker Earn? 

According to governmental data, a support worker makes a weekly salary of $854.00 on average. However, the salary of an Individual Support Worker can vary significantly with their level of experience and qualifications. Generally, those who are just starting in the profession may earn a lower wage, which increases with time and the accumulation of practical experience. According to the NDIS pay arrangements, the hourly rate for support workers ranges from $29.25 to $49.95 depending on experience level.  

Professional certifications and specialised training can also elevate an individual’s earning potential, as they demonstrate a higher level of expertise and commitment to the field. The Global Business College of Australia (GBCA) offers care training certificate programs such as the Certificate III in Individual Support and Certificate IV in Disability Support, which provides practical knowledge and hands-on experience through work placement. Check out these programs if you want to get a head start on your career as a support worker. 

Furthermore, how much you can earn as a disabled or aged carer also depends on type of employer, and the nature of the work. For instance, a care staff working in the Community Services & Development industry may expect wages on the higher end ($63,843 per annual average), while those working within Hospitality & Tourism might expect salary on the lower end ($55,120 per annual average). Those working for private organisations or in metropolitan areas may also see higher wages compared to their counterparts in rural settings or within public sector roles. 

Additional Benefits and Perks for Individual Support Workers 

Beyond the base salary, individual support workers in Victoria may enjoy a variety of additional benefits and perks that contribute to their total remuneration package. These can include superannuation contributions, paid leave entitlements, professional development opportunities, and flexible working arrangements. Some employers may also offer health insurance, travel allowances, and support for further education. 

As the demand for individual support workers is consistently growing, the role of an individual support worker is becoming even more crucial. Embark on a rewarding career today in helping to improve others’ quality of life. 

Building a Professional LinkedIn Profile: A Student’s Guide

In today’s digital age, your online presence can easily become your resume. How well you present yourself online can have a direct impact on the first impressions from employers. For students stepping into the professional world, LinkedIn is a dynamic platform to showcase your background, skills, and achievements. Here’s how you can develop a compelling LinkedIn profile that not only reflects your current accomplishments but also paves the way for future opportunities.  

1. Start with a Professional Profile Photo

As your profile photo tends to make the first impression for recruiters, choose a clear, professional photo with a smart outfit, simple background, and good lighting. If you want to take a step further, you may seek professional photographers to shoot your profile photos. You might be able to find them at photobooths during career events on campus. As your profile picture can speak volumes about your professionalism, invest time and effort in producing a quality photo.  

2. Craft a Compelling Headline

Your headline/ title should express yourself beyond your current student status. To fully deliver how you perceive your professional trajectory, also include your future aspirations. This may address what you hope to achieve, or the field in which you would like to work after finishing your studies. Phrases like “Aspiring Marketing Professional” or “Computer Science Student & Tech Enthusiast” can provide useful insights into your ambitions. If you need ideas for your headline, you can check out the profiles of workers you admire or recent alumni.  

3. Summarise Your Story

The summary section is the key point of your profile. It’s where you can highlight your academic achievements, qualifications, and goals. Be genuine and mention what you’re passionate about, the skills you have, why your chosen field perfectly fits you, and how you aim to impact the field.  

4. Showcase Your Experience

Here you can include your working experience, including part-time jobs, paid/unpaid internships, volunteer work, and extracurricular activities. Describe your responsibilities and achievements in each role, focusing on what you learned and how you contributed. Don’t worry if you do not have a long work history. You can highlight your volunteer experience or extracurricular activities, and these experiences may also be highly evaluated by recruiters. Use action verbs and clarify your accomplishments with numbers or percentages when possible.  

5. Detail Your Educational Background

Regarding educational background, you should include your college, major, and expected graduation date. To provide more context to your academic dedication and interests, consider listing relevant courses, your GPA (if impressive), and any honours or awards.  

6. Highlight Skills and Endorsements

List skills relevant to your career goals, and encourage classmates, professors, and past employers to endorse the skills. These validations add credibility to your profile. If you’re not sure which skills to mention, have a look at some job descriptions in your field and identify the skills highlighted.

7. Engage with Your Network

After completing your profile, start connecting with peers, alumni, and professionals in your field of interest. Actively participate in discussions, share relevant articles, and congratulate connections on their achievements. Remind yourself that networking is about building relationships, not just increasing your connection count.  

8. Get Recommendations

Aside from endorsements on your skills, you can also get recommendations from professors, supervisors, or colleagues, which provides a personal touch to your profile. They are powerful testimonials of your character and work ethic.  

9. Be an Active Participant

Regularly update your profile with new achievements, projects, or learning experiences. A dynamic profile shows that you are evolving and actively engaged in professional development.  

Conclusion  

Your LinkedIn profile is more than a digital resume; it’s the narrative of your professional journey. For students, it’s a platform to articulate not only where you’ve been but also where you’re headed. By thoughtfully crafting each section, you set the stage for your future career, opening doors to opportunities that align with your aspirations and values.  

Follow GBCA’s social media and blog for regular updates on current student events and useful insights!  

 

References 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-tips-students-new-grads-linkedin-omar-garriott/  

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-optimize-your-linkedin-account-even-youvenever-had-parker-pell/ 

Challenges International Students Face While Living in Australia

Challenges International Students Face in Australia

New international students who arrive in Australia are often excited to start their new chapter in life. They come with big dreams and high hopes to build the future career path that they would like to pursue.  

However, their plans are almost always faced with challenges and roadblocks that delays or even halts their plans. In this article, we will be focusing particularly on a couple of these challenges.  

 

The Education System Is Very Different From We Know in Australia 

This is considered one of the most common challenges that new international students face in Australia. The education system overseas can be very different from Australia. Students struggle to understand how to do proper research and cite references, be an active member of a group assignment or even understanding the course requirements.

difference-in-education-systems---gbca-college

Getting the Right Information and Introduction to Life in Australia 

As exciting as living in a new country can be, if you don’t get the right information at the start, life might get tough for you in Australia. New students often struggle with getting around, finding the right places to do their shopping, places to live and organising their paperwork. This is where student orientation programs and guides come in handy.

melbourne-state-library-gbca-international-students
 

The Language Barrier 

Learning the English language can be a big challenge. There are different grammar rules and exceptions in English that makes it very difficult for new students to reach a level of fluency that allows them to communicate comfortably with others. 

What makes this language barrier even worse is when students start speaking with locals. They don’t realise that Australians speak fast, and have their own slang, and pronounce and say words differently. Which can be very difficult to understand for non-native speakers. 

 


 

How to overcome these challenges? 

GBCA highly recommend international students understand an English language course that helps develop and improve their English language skills for academic, work and social purposes.  

We currently offer:  

These courses focus not only on grammar and speaking skills, but also teaches you how to prepare for your education in Australia, learn how to do research, and cite your references properly.   

If you would like to learn more, get in touch with one of our consultants 

enquiry@gbca.edu.au 

 

 

 

Nebula’s Experience at Multicultural Event

  • Nebula is one of the staff members of GBCA and she would like to share her experience as part of the GBCA community 

 

How time flies! It has been more than three years since I moved to Melbourne, and so much has happened in the blink of an eye. Melbourne is a very special city in terms of demography – many people from different cultural backgrounds are calling Melbourne home. I guess everyone somehow expected a regular level of “cultural shock” . 

 

Melbourne has many wonderful features after one got through the initial “shocks”. Working at GBCA, I often enjoy the serenity and calm when strolling around the green spaces near the college, which are within a few minutes’ walk – isn’t that delightful? Especially as our college is only two blocks away from Central Station.

 

Yesterday we held a multicultural celebration at the college’s library. It was a short two-hours lunch gathering, but it reflected the unique charm of Melbourne in many ways. There were staff, lecturers and students from our college, as well as guests from the University of Canberra and Deakin University. Over 70 guests from many walks of life: different ages, different country of origins, have different heritage and different cultural backgrounds, all came together to celebrate a community that we established for ourselves.

 

The event was inspired by the Diwali festival and coincidentally this year’s Halloween as well. Some people showed up in beautiful Saris and others were in fun Halloween costumes like apes and witches – believe it or not, we were not the only ones dressed up when we walked around that evening… 

 

Diwali (also spelt Deepawali) is regarded to be the Festival of Lights. It is one of the four major festivals celebrated by Hindus and a grand festival in India, usually taking place in the tenth or eleventh month of the Indian Gregorian calendar. To me, Diwali has a lot of similarities to the Lunar New Year in China. I enjoyed the many legends and regional stories shared by my colleges and students. They told me that on this day, fireworks and celebratory lights illuminate the night sky and purify our body and mind. Not only is it a metaphor of good defeating evil, it also serves as the symbol of knowledge fending off ignorance and enriching our lives – I love this metaphor.

 

On the other hand, Halloween is rather different from the fear-themed Chinese Ghost Festival and Ching Ming Festival. It is widely known as a popular holiday from the United States, but it can also be traced back to centuries ago in Europe, as it is related to the Iron Age Celtic’s “Samhain”. The ancient Celtic Savin Festival is the celebration of the end of the harvesting season and the beginning of winter. According to the Celtic story, the spirit of the dead would return to visit the living – now that’s rather similar to Ching Ming! I guess to some extent, Halloween commemorates the generations and experiences before us, farewellautumn or fall and prepare for winter… which can be confusing in the Southern Hemisphere as we’re actually preparing for a hot summer according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

 

Either way, it is wonderful to be able to find parallels between cultural groups.

 

My most memorable moment on the day was my first bite into the famous traditional Indian desert “Gulab Jamun” and “Rasgulla”. They were made from dairy products and sugar, black tea, rose water, rose petals, etc… I always believed that the experience of food can be the first step in experiencing attitudes, cultures and lives. I encourage everyone to go out there and learn about other cultures – starting with food!

 

The only imperfection of the day was that I didn’t win anything from the event’s lucky draw: movie tickets, JB Hi-Fi vouches, Google Home, and those cute little gift packages! Hopefully I will be lucky in GBCA’s upcoming Christmas event, and experience more stories and delicious food! 

 

I know there’s no way we can list and try all the different foods, stories, cultures and festivals – but if we keep an open mind, and the willingness and openness to connect with one another, we will  have a bigger and more wonderful world to share.

 

Aussie presences at CIIE Shanghai

Australian Trade Minister, the Hon. Simon Birmingham is leading a delegation of Aussie state politicians and business leaders to Shanghai during the first week of November to attend CIIE in Shanghai, which GBCA is one of the only 10 Aussie tertiary education providers exhibiting. 

Aussie presences at CIIE Shanghai

Senator Birmingham was the Minister for Education and Training, during a speech at the EduTECH Conference, 8/6/2018, Senator Birmingham had expressed that the Federal Government “knows the challenges our nation and our education system face in preparing for the future”, which prompted the country’s investment on innovation and reinvigoration of Australia’s national research infrastructure.  

GBCA’s motto is “Innovative Minds, Caring Hearts, Global Skills”. Our team hope to become one of the critical parts of the Aussie education ecosystem and help bringing young talents to enrich the Australian innovation and research landscape. 

Senator Birmingham had contributed the following article based on his experience at CIIE on the Australian Financial Review where he explained “…education, healthcare and logistics” are some of the longstanding partnerships fields between Australia and China. 

Aussie presences at CIIE Shanghai

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GBCA in China International Import Expo – learning from the best

GBCA’s Managing Director Dr. Celina Yu had represent GBCA at the first ever China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, 5-10/11/18. GBCA is one of the 106 Aussie exhibitors among 2668 exhibitors from around the world.  

GBCA in China International Import Expo

Based on economic forecasts, China expects to import goods and services of over 13.8 trillion AUD (10 trillion USD) every year from the late 2010s. CIIE marked an important point in international economic history and a unique platform for international collaborations. During CIIE, Dr Yu has connected with many international delegations and discussed global economic and trade issues and developments.  

GBCA in China International Import Expo

This year’s CIIE feature the launch of the Hongqiao International Economic and Trade Forum. The forum highlights on topic areas including “trade and openness”, “trade and innovation”, and “trade and investment” with world class panelists for example Mr Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group; Mr Bill Gates, Chairman of the Board of Terra Power, LLC; Mr John Denton, Secretary General of International Chamber of Commerce and many distinguish economic leaders.  

GBCA in China International Import Expo

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An interview with China Education News Network (中国教育新闻网)

We are very delighted to share that our college’s Managing Director Dr. Celina Yu was interviewed by one of the major education news outlet in China, China Education News Network, during Day 2 of the China International Import Expo in Shanghai. 

An interview with China Education News Network

“The first China International Import Expo had opened in Shanghai today; exhibitors, guests and audiences gathered (at National Exhibition and Convention Centre) in Shanghai. It is a world stage that promote exchanges and cooperation between countries and continents, many participants from the education sector had told our reporters that the Expo will be a valuable opportunity for exchange in innovation and international collaboration ideas.” – 5/11/18, China Education News Network 

Reporter from the Beijing based Network had complimented that GBCA is closely in touch with this great opportunity and appreciate GBCA’s welcoming approach at the Expo, GBCA booth was set up in the Trade zone at the exhibition’s Main Hall. 

An interview with China Education News Network

GBCA’s Managing Director Dr. Yu had told the reporter: “Since we opened our doors, we closely stay tuned with the demand from around the world, for example, China has great demand for tertiary education. So, we provide a good and practical variety of high quality education and training, ranging from employment-ready training to academic qualifications; we also have good collaborations with Soochow University and the University of Canberra that enabled us to offer Postgraduate and Undergraduate opportunities to international students that are interested. By attending CIIE, we are hoping to reach out to more and wider scope of cooperation, particularly with the Chinese government, China based enterprises and schools.” 

Full article was published on page 2, Breaking News segment, China Education News Network, 6/11/2018. Link to read in Chinese:《中国教育报》2018年11月06日第2版 版名:新闻·要闻 (NB external site – browser compatibility may vary)

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GBCA is attending the inaugural China International Import Expo

Global Business College of Australia (GBCA) is delighted to take part in the inaugural China International Import Expo (CIIE), held at the National Exhibition and Convention Centre in Shanghai. 

CIIE is hosted by the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China with Shanghai Municipal People’s Government and organised by China International Import Expo Bureau. This Expo is the first and the largest of its kind and partnered with important global organisations including the World Trade Organization, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and United Nations Industrial Development Organization. CIIE is China’s official welcome to the world’s economy, selected delegates from over 100 countries had taken part.  

GBCA is one of the only 10 Australian tertiary education providers exhibiting at this Expo this year, other Australian delegations from the education sector include: 


GBCA offers a wide variety of higher qualification studies from certificate to diplomas of short courses within a positive and modern environment. By attending important world-class event like CIIE, GBCA strive to learn from and to forge meaningful relationships with the best from around the globe, hence our worldly focus programs and highly workforce-ready graduates. 

Dr. Celina Yu, Managing Director of GBCA is our delegate leader at CIIE, for more information please click here 

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