HESTA awards spotlight aged care
Emma Payne has been named a winner at the 2025 HESTA Awards, telling AAA she plans to use part of the prize money to support The Daisie Chain’s rebrand, and fellow winner Dr Sandra Iuliano hopes to expand a training program for better nutritional care.
Three out of the eight winners of the 2025 HESTA Excellence Awards were from the aged care and community services sectors.
Each of the winners receives $7,500 courtesy of ME – a subsidiary of Bank of Queensland and longstanding supporter of the HESTA Awards. The money is intended for furthering education, service improvement or team development.
This year included over 420 nominations, the most in the awards’ 18-year history.
Emma Payne received the Aged Care – Individual Leadership award for her work with The Daisie Chain, an interactive dementia care service that uses music and movement to foster connection, joy and dignity for people living with dementia, their families and care staff.
Ms Payne told Australian Ageing Agenda she feels “honoured and energised.”
“This award recognises the residents, families and teams I’ve learned from across 70,000-plus interactions, and it validates a simple idea: when we enter their world, care becomes connection,” Ms Payne said.
She added that she was grateful for the spotlight on “practical, human approaches that anyone can learn” and the recognition of 10-plus years of work – from a sole trader to now a “thriving company.”
“The award is for the whole team and the aged care facilities who trust us to engage with their residents and clients,” Ms Payne said.
Ms Payne has big plans for the prize money, including:
- supporting the rebrand from The Daisie Chain to HappiHive
- launch a new, more accessible website
- expand the Enter Their World training program and provide subsidised workshops for regional and under-resourced communities, develop hands-on toolkits, short video modules and train more facilitators
- invest more in her personal brand, allowing for further reach through education sessions and keynote speeches.
For the future, Ms Payne said she hopes to “scale what works” by providing more practical training in homes and providing stronger ongoing and induction support. She also hopes to launch the new website, which will allow homes to plan activities further in advance.
“We’ll build partnerships, grow nationally, and keep measuring impact so homes see fewer distressed reactions and more meaningful moments,” she said.
As dementia care continues to develop in Australia, Ms Payne said she hopes to see more empathy and understanding and less “managing behaviours.”
“Dementia is something many people only learn about when it arrives and by then it’s raw and emotional,” she explained, adding systems should “meet that moment” with “compassion and practical skills” including:
- person-led practice embedded every day
- training aligned to the National Dementia Education and Training Standards that helps staff interpret behaviour as communication
- protected time for meaningful engagement
- families as partners
- culturally safe, sensory-aware environments
- stronger support for regional services
- outcomes that value connection, comfort and quality of life for people living with dementia – not just clinical metrics.
Allied health had its own categories at the awards. One of those went to nutrition expert Dr Sandra Iuliano, a senior research fellow at University of Melbourne’s Department of Medicine, who received the Individual Leadership award for her advocacy in improving the quality of food provided to aged care residents.
She told AAA she is feeling “quite humbled” by the award and that it is “lovely to have research recognised.”
Dr Sandra Iuliano also praised the positive atmosphere of the awards night and the recognition niche topics were receiving, saying it was “wonderful” to see people going “that one step beyond, and for the benefit of others.”
In a world-first food-based intervention involving more than 7,000 aged care residents, Dr Iuliano was able to demonstrate a higher content of protein and calcium in residential care menus helped to reduce falls, fractures and malnutrition in residents.
She said the research team has since taken those findings and used them to develop a training program with the intent of turning it into an online platform so it can be accessed by all food service staff. The prize money received will go towards furthering the training as they test its efficacy.
Dr Iuliano said she was interested in looking at the “whole eco-system of food and nutrition,” with the resident at the centre, and has received a grant for research into oral health amongst aged care residents and applied for another to research dementia-friendly dining rooms.
“The central person is the resident, but then you need to look at all the factors around that person, including their own limitations and how we can support them to have eating enjoyment, but also that they’re getting proper nutrition,” she said.
“The Act, because it’s resident focused, we really need to consider what are the needs of the individual resident – that’s nutritional needs but it’s also cultural and social and spiritual and emotional,” she added.
“So I think we need to look at how we can meet the individual needs, but you need to be able to do it efficiently. The reality is… you can’t have 50 people getting 50 different meals at one time. It’s not practical,” said Dr Iuliano. “You’ve got to work out how can it be done and how best to facilitate that everyone gets something they want.”
But there is still a need for improved nutrition strategies to remain practical, which is why they conducted the research in aged care settings, said Dr Iuliano. “It’s one thing to do it in a lab, it’s another to be able to do it in the setting with the limitations that are going to be there.”
South Australia-based not-for-profit ACH Group was also recognised for its facilitation of a virtual cycling challenge, with the social and health team receiving the Aged Care – Team Excellence award.
In partnership with Tourism South Australia’s Tour Down Under, ACH Group engaged and supported 210 aged care residents to collectively cycle 546 kilometres. The winning home logged 1,304 minutes on the bikes.
Do you have an aged care industry award to share? Send us the details and images to editorial@australianageingagenda.com.au
