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Healthcare assistants provide the majority of direct care to the residents living in aged residential care. In New Zealand, the delivery of care is under the supervision of the registered nurse. The purpose of this article is to examine the New Zealand policy landscape and care demands in aged residential care. Within the current care environments, registered nurses are challenged by the responsibility of ensuring quality care delivered under supervision by healthcare assistants in an increasingly complex and contract driven environment. The complexity and acuity of a client population requiring specialised care challenges the constraints of care contract expectations and creates significant difficulties for both registered nurses and healthcare assistants. Variability in role identification and scope is a significant barrier to understanding the healthcare assistant workforce as a whole. Individual employment contracts between the employers and healthcare assistants promote further variability with differing role and certification requirements for hourly rates of pay. National contracts used by District Health Boards do not address the acuity creep that is occurring at all levels in aged residential care and the workload increases that directly impact registered nurse supervision of care. The overall funding of aged residential care is caught between a client population predominately funded by the State and the