ARIIA announces four new grant recipients
ARIIA has awarded 11 new projects with a grant to implement aged care translational projects.
A digital alert feedback system and a mindfulness yoga program to build resilience in staff are among the latest 11 projects to win grants from Aged Care Research and Industry Innovation Australia.
ARIIA research director and capability lead Professor Sue Gordon announced four successful projects for the fourth round of grants at Monday’s dinner event of ARIIA’s inaugural conference.
“We have 11 grants that are being awarded for round four,” Professor Gordon told delegates. “And I can announce four out of the 11 that we have all signed off to go.”
The first successful project is from University of Canberra, and ValleyView Residence in Collie Western Australia, who have partnered with Humanetix – the company behind aged care clinical software ACE – and Customer Feedback Systems Australasia.
“Their project is the implementation and evaluation of a digital alert feedback system to support residential aged care staff to enhance quality of care. They are creating an aged care electronic data and information tool that pulls data from multiple sources, streams data into classification of critical, urgent, non-urgent and nice-to-know information. This will trigger escalation pathways and ensure the right people are notified at the right time about the candidates needed,” said Professor Gordon.
ValleyView Residence chief executive officer Mark Sheldon-Stemm welcomed the grant and said it had potential to help many residential aged care providers.
“We are pleased that ARIIA has provided the grant and we look forward to implementing a system that will allow staff to respond quickly to events and in a way that meets the needs, wants and wishes of the residents,” Mr Sheldon-Stemm told Australian Ageing Agenda.
“We also see this as a template for other organisations so they can pull the information together that is critical, which will benefit the residents in a residential care setting.”
The second winning project announced on Monday evening is a collaboration between University of Tasmania and OneCare, who are building resilience and reducing burnout in aged care staff through the implementation of a mindfulness program.
“The Mindfulness in Motion program is an eight-week online evidence-based mindfulness and yoga intervention that has strong evidence to support its efficacy in enhancing healthcare professional wellbeing and reducing burnout. And we know that this is a massive problem for our aged care sector in Australia,” Professor Gordon announced.
The third successful project is from the Barossa Hills Fleurieu local health network with Flinders University and involves a pilot to embed a palliative care link nurse into residential aged care.
“This project leverages the evidence from the acute care experience to tackle some challenges in delivering good palliative and end-of-life care in residential aged care facilities throughout regional South Australia,” Professor Gordon said
The final grant announced has gone to Uniting Communities South Australia and Flinders University to implement a program to reduce the use of restrictive practices in residential aged care.
“This project seeks to address the problem of the overuse of restrictive practices in residential aged care settings by implementing a program of interventions to develop the skills of aged care staff to provide better day-to-day care of people with complex needs,” Professor Gordon said.
It will adapt and implement the Safewards program, which is an evidence-based model that has been tested in psychiatric settings.
“We look forward to being able to announce the other seven recipients once all of the legal agreements have signed off,” Professor Gordon told delegates.
Speaking to AAA at the event, Professor Gordon said ARIIA has awarded 41 grants across four rounds to date from over 150 applications.
“The strike rates are much better than some of the other funding programs,” she told AAA. “ARIIA has invested more than $6 million so far in grants for the aged care sector, but with the in-kind and co-contributions, it’s nearly $11 million that’s gone into the aged care sector for those translational research projects that we think can really make a difference.”
While the six-month grants from round one are starting to come in, applications for round six close on 24 June. “And that’s our last round of grants at this stage,” Professor Gordon said.
The two-day conference – Facing the Future: Aged Care 2030 and Beyond – continues on Tuesday.
Main image: Professor Sue Gordon announcing the grant recipients at ARIIA’s conference dinner on Monday evening
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