A survey underway aims to identify gaps in residential aged care service provision in order to steer the new places announced this month to where they are needed most.
Minister for Aged Care Ken Wyatt announced on Tuesday that a wide range of aged care stakeholders were invited to take part in a consultation to help inform the 2018-19 Aged Care Approvals Round, which will open “shortly”.
As announced in the recent Federal Budget, the next ACAR will include 13,500 new residential aged care places, 775 short term restorative care places and $60 million in capital grants.
The consultation is taking place between 15 and 28 May and its results will help guide the distribution and targeting of new places and capital grants in each state and territory, Mr Wyatt said.
“We are keen to hear about the gaps in current aged care availability, not just in terms of locations but in terms of special needs and the requirements of particular groups, such as people from regional, rural and remote areas and people living with dementia,” Minister Wyatt said.
Approved aged care providers, national aged care peaks, Aged Care Assessment Teams, Primary Health Networks, local councils and consumer groups are being invited to take part.
The Department of Health said it will email stakeholders a link to the consultation hub, where they can fill in a survey about unmet demand for aged care within a local area.
Organisations that don’t receive an invitation can access the survey by contacting the Department of Health at acar@health.gov.au
Details of the consultation are available here.
Co-design of My Aged Care
The Department of Health and the Aged Care Industry IT Council are looking for aged care providers interested in participating in workshops to inform the enhancements to My Aged Care announced in last week’s budget.
The initiative builds on the co-design activities the ACIITC and its industry partners have undertaken previously to improve design and user experience of My Aged Care.
ACIITC is seeking expressions of interest from providers to join workgroups that will attend a series of five “accelerated design” workshops conducted by the department commencing early June.
Each workshop will run for two weeks and targets a specific topic for which policy, process and system changes will be discussed and designed with users including assessors, service providers and client representatives, the ACIITC council said.
The topics covered include client journey tracking and management, regular service information updates for providers, self service features for consumers, service finders and priority backlog items.
Expressions of interest can be registered by here.
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