Look to research in delivering wellness, reablement approaches

AUDIO: Translating wellness, reablement and restorative care approaches into practice is both an adaptive leadership and technical challenge, a leading consultant has said.

AUDIO: Translating wellness, reablement and restorative care approaches into practice is both an adaptive leadership and technical challenge, a leading consultant has told the Active Ageing Conference 2015.

Researcher, consultant and trainer Carrie Hayter, said the approaches now mandated under the Commonwealth Home Support Program and consumer directed care meant organisations and leaders had to change approaches and that required new technical expertise.

Carrie Hayter
Carrie Hayter

Aged care was created with the interests of providers and professionals rather than older people, and that while later years were historically defined as frailty and sickness, that was now changing, she told the conference hosted by Australian Ageing Agenda and Community Care Review.

The voices of older people were not heard in the past, but active ageing was emerging, which the government’s economic framework of containing costs within a human rights approach underpinned, Ms Hayter said.

In developing and implementing wellness and reablement approaches in community aged care services, providers needed to engage with research and be clear about the benefits to clients, who might reject the concept or not understand what it meant, she said.

“We need to engage and connect with the research community and engage and learn from older people,” she said.

Ms Hayter said it was the small steps that mattered and she encouraged organisations to be curious, test ideas and get behind frontline staff to translate the research into practice.

Speaking after her presentation, Ms Hayter tells AAA’s Natasha Egan what a mandated wellness and reablement approach means for providers:

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Tags: Active Ageing Conference, active ageing conference 2015, Carrie Hayter, cdc, CHSP, reablement, wellness,

5 thoughts on “Look to research in delivering wellness, reablement approaches

  1. The money that the government has spent on leading us through this merry chase has been wasted time and again. To say this to providers is an insult. How else will the services be delivered? There are many large providers who are already demonstrating they do not have the resources and the capacity to change to CDC. Our clients are very unhappy with their providers and the fact that nothing has changed none of them have been approached to reassess their goals or services and have been told nothing will change. This has all been handled very badly and with millions of dollars being spent on the constant changes. There needs to be an inquiry into how this has been handled by both governments and the amount of money that has been wasted on changing their minds, changing departments, the cost of changing logos and so on. Now we are changing to the Dept of Health. All this money is being spent not on service delivery but on government red tape. Why has there been no declaration on how much this entire process has cost tax payers and what is being cut back on to pay for all this change for the better.

  2. Could not agree more with this. The ACCLM has been utilising the research and designing learning & development around transforming care teams to enable this approach to be taken from the frontline in care.

    New skills in leadership & Management, counselling, mentoring and diverse psychosocial assessment of the clients needs and setting the goals to be reached.

    Much of the CDC is focused on consumer empowerment, however this requires consumer engagement and education. Providers will need to transform their care teams in a planned and structured process that also empowers the care teams to work this model for the best outcomes.

    Drew

  3. Yet another thinly veiled plug, Drew? Is every (ill conceived) government initiative just another opportunity to cash in? That home insulation scheme went well, didn’t it?

    Ted’s on the money; it’s a shambles out there. Re-enablement, wellness implementation, consumer engagement…if we rated the CDC rollout by the number of meaningless catch-phrases it would be a world leader.

    Sadly, my granny just wants someone to mow the lawns, do a bit of cleaning and escort her to the occasional appointment. She doesn’t know what ‘Active Ageing’ means (does anybody?) and she certainly doesn’t want to be ‘re-enabled’ (she reckons it sounds painful).

    There’s an obvious disconnect between beurocrat and elderly consumer. Stop telling people what they need. Octogenarians shouldn’t have to be empowered, educated and engaged just to get a few hours help when they most need it. The only relevant challenge for providers is to make it simple for their customers.

  4. Not a Veiled plug Mark. Just transparent about our services. Many of us don’t agree with the reform as its being rolled out and unfortunately also don’t get the opportunity to be engaged on our input to what is evidence based.

    I have a focus on the education and support of the care provider/carer/health professional that has to follow this lead from peak bodies driving government and meet the changes that are being legislated. I for one believe we are getting lost in the language, and distracting us from providing the best care to our consumers in need.

    If we can manage to equip the frontline staff with the skills they need to adapt and meet the care needs with a balance to compliance then perhaps the true relationship between carers and consumers will separate out what’s real and what’s not. Most of these people have cultural diverse and skilled education issues themselves, and don’t get a great remuneration either.

    Part of this change we face is also consumer education that empowers them to make positive decisions in their care so they may achieve some wellness regardless of the package rules. But sadly in the end it’s still funded care for most and of course then come the rules.

    There are not many institutes that specifically focus on care leadership and management, and so I will mention our services when I can if it can help.

  5. Hard to see how training staff to fit a flawed model advances anything other than the trainer’s coffers.

    We’ve been here before; the entire program was broken before it started. It’ll be scrapped and replaced in due course. Complicity over confrontation only delays change.

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