Shaping the Future of Aged Care
A blog post written by Jennifer Tieman
Reproduced with permission from RePaDD.
The Aged Care Centre for Growth and Translational Research aims to transform the way we care for older Australians. This new Centre led by Flinders University, with funding from the Australian Government, will bring together consumers, industry, and researchers to translate research into practice and develop a more capable aged care workforce able to drive sector wide improvements.
RePaDD is part of the core Flinders research team responsible for the Centre’s delivery. Our researchers will take on the challenge of building the Centre’s Knowledge and Implementation Hub (KIH). The KIH will bring together aged care evidence, tools and practice resources into one easy to find and easy to use resource for the aged care workforce. It will not only map the existing evidence, resources, tools, and practice guides but appraise them for their quality, relevance and usefulness for the aged care sector.
For each of the three years, we will build evidence for four priority topics. In 2022, the KIH team will release knowledge packages for dementia, rehabilitation & restorative care, social isolation and mental health and wellbeing.
The KIH resources will support the other activities of this Centre. The Innovator program will build workforce capability with a developmental training program for 600 aged care staff based around translational research. The Aged Care Partnering Program will help staff develop projects that address real world problems. A grants program will provide a further avenue to support sector growth and the use of research by the workforce.
RePaDD is well placed to deliver the Knowledge and Implementation Hub given our background in generating evidence-based care processes and undertaking digital translation in national palliative care and aged care programs over the last ten years. Our experience with the CareSearch, palliAGED and ELDAC projects means we can draw on defined quality approaches, extensive networks of content experts and well-established relationships with aged care groups and organisations.
This is an exciting opportunity for us to explore the pathways and relationships that support the use of evidence and the integration of research into aged care services and organisations. It will also enable us to deepen our relationships within aged care at a time when palliative and end of life care is an increasingly important topic.
Jennifer Tieman
Director
Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying