Care and support sector volunteering %

April, 2026

Volunteers are an essential, but distinct component of Australia's care workforce, with hundreds of thousands of people volunteering every year. Volunteers are critical to all sectors within the care economy, including health and mental health care, early childhood education and care, disability support, aged care, veterans' care and other community services.

Volunteers perform a variety of roles, including:

Assisting on hospital wards, including in Intensive Care Units
Providing education and resources
Promoting awareness of issues and sharing lived experience
Administration, program coordination and fundraising
Emotional and peer support
Practical support, such as transport and assistance with tasks like personal care, shopping or gardening
Social support such as companionship visits, reading, craft groups or musical performances
Counselling and other services
Running toy libraries, gift shops and information desks.

Care and support sector volunteers operate in community settings, hospitals, residential aged care facilities, in people's homes, online, over the phone and at events. Through their roles, volunteers contribute to increased workforce participation rates for carers and improved health, wellbeing and social outcomes for care recipients.

Status of care and support sector volunteering

According to ABS data from November 2025, Health Care and Social Assistance is the largest employing industry in Australia and continues to grow as demand for quality services grows. A series of Royal Commissions into important aspects of the care and support sector has led to reforms in aged care, and some developments in disability and veterans' affairs with more changes underway, many of which impact the volunteering ecosystem. People may work and volunteer across multiple segments of the care economy and there is growing demand for both paid and volunteer workers to meet the growing demand for services.

The new Aged Care Act came into effect on 1 November 2025. It sets out the rules for the Australian Government-funded aged care system and includes services delivered to older people in their homes, in community settings and in residential care. The closely linked model for regulating aged care, which we have previously advised on, provides a risk-proportionate approach to key issues affecting volunteering and has been the subject of extensive consultation. Critically, as a result of our advocacy, volunteers have been recognised in the legislation.

The Federal Government is in the process of reviewing the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Changes to the Act will have implications for volunteers and volunteer involving organisations, not just those operating in the disability sector, but those interacting with people with disability in any sphere.

How is Volunteering Australia engaging on and progressing this work?

Policy position

While volunteers are an essential, but distinct part of the care and support sector workforce, they are often not considered in workforce strategies. Volunteering Australia continues to advocate for consideration of the volunteer workforce, differentiation between paid and volunteer roles and a risk-proportionate approach to regulation of the volunteer workforce.

A major challenge for people seeking to volunteer in care and support is navigating the care sector volunteer worker screening and training requirements. These requirements currently differ between sectors in the care economy, and are also not portable between states and territories. This can lead to complexity and confusion for volunteers and volunteer involving organisations. We support the need to improve the efficiency of workforce regulation while still ensuring appropriate protections for care recipients and the accessibility of volunteering opportunities.

Volunteers should be included in data collection and reporting for the care and support sector workforce to provide better information on the contribution they make and to inform risk-proportionate approaches to workforce regulation.

Volunteering Australia also advocates for greater inclusivity inclusion in volunteering and recognition of the contribution people with disability, older people, people with lived experience of health and mental health issues, and veterans make to society through volunteering.

Consultation

Volunteering Australia has worked with the Australian Government, through the Department of Disability, Health and Aged Care, both directly and through the formal submission process to represent the needs of the volunteering ecosystem on aged care reforms. We continue to engage regularly with the department and the volunteering ecosystem as the new reforms are bedded down and implementation issues are addressed. The department consulted the volunteering ecosystem on the development of resources for volunteering in aged care.

We have published 8 submissions on this topic since the beginning of 2023. You can access these submissions, as well as all of our other submissions and position statements on our website.