A sample of aged care providers will implement two grant winning projects that will hopefully improve the quality of aged care.
Fourteen aged care providers have been chosen to take part in two grant-winning flagship programs announced this week.
The 2025 Flagship Project Grants were designed to address the need identified by the 2021 Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety for greater collaboration and multidisciplinary approaches to solve the sector’s most difficult problems.
The winning programs of the $2 million grants, which are delivered through the Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia’s (ARIIA) Aged Care Collaborative, tackle two major challenges faced by the aged care sector: workforce strategies and data literacy.
“Rather than working in silos, we need to encourage a more collaborative and innovative approach to solve the most difficult and pervasive problems,” said ARIIA CEO Reuben Jacob.
“We want to offer more education and career pathways to aged care workers, better sharing of data to inform decisions, and better management of wound care and pressure injuries as this could improve quality of life for older Australians and reduce hospital admissions.”
The funds, provided by the commonwealth government and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, will be used to support the 14 providers to co-design and implement the flagship projects over 12 months.
The providers were chosen from an application and assessment process led by the Aged Care Collaborative Advisory Group.
“The Flagship Projects bring together providers from diverse contexts with the expertise to develop scalable solutions that can be adopted more broadly across the sector with the ultimate aim to improve the holistic wellbeing and quality of care for older Australians,” Mr Jacob said.
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The first flagship project, Enhancing Role Clarity, Communication and Career Pathways with a Flexible Leadership Model, aims to address the workforce pressures that come from staff workload and burnout, workforce retention and limited career growth.
“Clarifying role scopes, accountabilities, and lines of communication, as well as providing more career progression opportunities, could improve staff engagement, collaboration and retention, improving quality of care and service provision,” said the ARIIA.
“This project leverages the positive outcomes of a previous ARIIA Grant Funded pilot project and will implement a facilitated co-design process and improvement project that incorporates staff, leadership, client and family feedback.
“Each participating aged care provider will undertake the project at one of their residential sites or home care regions.”
Providers implementing Flagship Project 1 include:
• Australian Unity’s residential aged care facility, St Patrick’s Green, Sydney NSW;
• Benetas’ residential aged care home, St George’s, Melbourne, VIC;
• Beaumont Care’s residential aged care facility, Kippa-Ring, Moreton Bay, QLD;
• Feros Care’s home care region, Gold Coast, QLD;
• integratedliving Australia home care region, Far North Coast, NSW; and
• Life Without Barriers’ home care region, Darling Downs, QLD.
Flagship Project 2, Empowering Data Literacy and Capability to Drive Quality Care: “will empower aged care staff with the knowledge, skills and confidence to enhance the use of data to improve care quality,” said the ARIIA.
“The project will focus on improving routinely collected data related to pressure injuries and wound care, and the participating aged care providers will undertake a capability building and co-design process to develop and implement a data-driven, evidence-based improvement project.
“Each participating aged care provider will undertake the project at one of their residential sites or home care regions.”
Providers implementing Flagship Project 2 include:
• Alwyndor’s residential aged care home, Adelaide, SA;
• Bolton Clarke’s home care region, East Melbourne, VIC;
• Elderbloom Community Care Centres’ residential aged care facilities, Perth, WA;
• Fronditha Care’s residential aged care facility, St Albans, Melbourne, VIC;
• Glow Health Care Australia’s home care region, Sydney and regional NSW;
• Lifeview’s residential aged care facility, Willow Wood, Melbourne, VIC;
• Regents Garden’s residential aged care facility, Scarborough, Perth, WA; and
• Warrigal’s residential aged care home, Wollongong, NSW.
“The selected sites represent a diverse mix of metropolitan and regional providers, small and large organisations, as well as residential and home care services, ensuring the learnings and outcomes are relevant to a broad range of providers,” said Holly Sparrow, ARIIA’s senior manager of strategic projects.
“ARIIA, along with a selection of subject matter experts, will provide each organisation with ongoing tailored support, and we are excited to facilitate the collaboration and shared learning within the projects and across the sector.”