Filipino Aged Care Workers: Australia Visa Pathways & Costs

How Filipino aged care workers and personal care assistants can move to Australia: the ANZSCO codes, the subclass 482 and DAMA pathways, the Community Work Australia skills assessment, and the real costs involved. Includes English requirements and what a legitimate employer sponsorship looks like. Figures as at September 2026.

Read the full guide, with official sources →

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Chapters

  1. 0:00 Australia is recruiting aged care workers
  2. 0:14 Two codes for this work
  3. 0:30 Two main pathways in
  4. 0:46 What the labour agreement changes
  5. 1:03 DAMA regions that include aged care roles
  6. 1:21 Skills assessment: Community Work Australia
  7. 1:40 English requirements
  8. 2:01 Total cost
  9. 2:18 What a legitimate sponsorship looks like
  10. 2:34 Pay and where it can lead
  11. 2:50 Confirm your ANZSCO code and your employer's labour agreement
  12. 3:03 Where to read more

Transcript

The Philippines is one of the countries Australia's aged care sector recruits from directly. Here's how the pathway actually works, the costs, and where people get it wrong.

There are two ANZSCO codes for this work. Four two three one one one is Aged or Disabled Carer. Four two three three one three is Personal Care Assistant. Getting the wrong one can fail your visa, even if you're doing the right job.

Aged care sits on no national skilled occupation list, so there's no points-tested visa for it. Most Filipino workers get in through one of two routes instead: the subclass four eight two with an employer, or a Designated Area Migration Agreement.

The aged care industry labour agreement is what makes most of this possible. It lets employers sponsor aged care roles that aren't on the standard lists, sometimes with lower English requirements, adjusted salary thresholds, and in some cases a path to permanent residence through the subclass one eight six.

Several regional agreements, called DAMAs, also include aged care roles: the Northern Territory, South Australia's regional DAMA, and Far North Queensland, plus others across Victoria, Western Australia, and New South Wales. The trade-off is you live and work in that region.

Before any of this, you need a skills assessment. Community Work Australia, or ACWA, assesses this occupation under the labour agreement. It costs five hundred and ninety five dollars, and takes six to ten weeks. A Philippine TESDA certificate might meet the benchmark, or it might not.

For a standard four eight two, you need Vocational English: five point oh in each of the four IELTS components. OET dropped its letter grades for numbers on the seventh of August twenty twenty five — now it's two twenty, two forty, two hundred, and two seventy across the four components. A labour agreement or DAMA can lower it.

All up, without needing a Certificate III in Australia, the total runs around five thousand five hundred to six thousand dollars. If you need the Certificate III here, that rises to eight thousand five hundred to fourteen thousand. The visa charge alone is four thousand and fifteen dollars.

A legitimate employer covers the nomination fee, around five hundred and forty dollars, and doesn't charge you to sponsor you. Large upfront agency fees, or a role that doesn't match your ANZSCO code, are worth checking before you sign anything.

Base pay for aged care workers runs about twenty eight to thirty four dollars an hour, after a fifteen percent Fair Work Commission increase. From there, some workers move into team leader, care coordinator, or facility management roles, or go on to study nursing.

The most common mistake is the wrong ANZSCO code, or signing before checking whether the employer actually holds a labour agreement. A MARA-registered migration agent can confirm your pathway before you commit to anything.

The full guide, with the official sources, is on migratio.com.au. The link is in the description. And if you'd like to talk it through, you can compare registered migration agents there, and see their fees before you book anything.

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