With 2024 coming to an end, it’s a great time to look back at some of the biggest changes and developments of the year in the community and health services sector.
Aged Care
Following the release of the final draft Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards in December 2024, this year the focus was on preparing for implementation, which will commence in July 2025. We worked hard over the 2024 Christmas break and then released an updated self-assessment for those Standards in early January, to help providers understand and prepare for expected changes and new requirements.
Throughout the year, we’ve been reviewing our suite of resources against the draft requirements to ensure they’ll be ready to support providers’ compliance when the new Framework comes into effect. From revising 19 resources to cover new evidence-based care requirements, to updating our safeguarding resources in light of SIRS changes, to releasing a new policy template on Personal Property, and using Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Clinical Alerts to guide the development of a new Extreme Heat policy template, we’ve been working to ensure we’re ready to support your organisation. We’ve also just recently updated and added to our Medication Management resources.
Disability
The findings and themes of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability have continued to inform changes in the disability sector (and beyond) throughout 2024. Following on from our work in 2023 to revise and update our safeguarding resources to reflect the recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission, this year we worked to create new resources and review our existing resources to reflect other recommendations. Some highlights include our new Policy: Human Rights and Policy: Disability Access and Inclusion.
We also updated our NDIS Code of Conduct self-assessment to reflect changes to the legislation, and built a new self-assessment designed for Disability Employment Service (DES) providers to help them comply with the DES Quality Framework.
More recently, we published a blog post on the NDIS regulatory reforms and some of the changes in the Disability sector, summarising the themes of focus, the changes already made and expectations for changes yet to come.
We will be closely monitoring the release of the consultation draft of the new NDIS Practice Standards and Rules in early 2025.
Healthcare
This year we’ve had an increased focus on building self-assessments under the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards umbrella. We worked in collaboration with some of our members to develop self-assessments for three of the Clinical Care Standards, to help healthcare providers meet their NSQHS obligations when delivering specific care supports in the following areas:
- Antimicrobial Stewardship;
- Delirium; and
- Psychotropic Medicines in Cognitive Disability or Impairment.
Following their launch in late 2023, we also released new self-assessments this year for the National Consensus Statement for End-of-Life Care and National Safety and Quality Cosmetic Surgery Standards.
State and Territory Self-assessments
The States and Territories have also been busy in 2024. Updates to major social services standards in Victoria (Victorian Social Services Standards replacing the Human Services Standards) and Queensland (Human Services Quality Standards) have resulted in changes to our self-assessments, while we’ve also been building self-assessments for more specialised state and territory Standards, such as the:
- ACT Children and Young People (Care and Protection Organisation) Standards,
- NSW Point to Point Safety Audit Tool, and the
- SA Injury Management Standards for Self-Insured Employers.
Many of our specialised state and territory self-assessments have been built in consultation with, or following requests from, our members, directly supporting their compliance. If there’s a self-assessment for a particular set of Standards you’d like to see in SPP, let us know!
A key area of focus for the States and Territories this year has been child safety and protection, with both Tasmania and Queensland introducing their Child Safe Standards to join the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, and the Victorian and New South Wales Child Safe Standards in the platform. We’ve built self-assessments for all of those jurisdictions, and will be watching closely for the release of child safe standards in other jurisdictions in the year to come!
Workplace Reforms
Another priority this year relates to working conditions for staff. Updates to the Fair Work Act 2009 have changed the way organisations assess a person’s status as a contractor or casual employee, and work to protect work-life balance through new right to disconnect provisions. We’ve updated our Policy: Contractor Management in response to these changes, and will be working on resources about the right to disconnect in the new year.
In addition, we’ve continued work on expanding and improving our suite of Workplace Health and Safety resources, including a new Manual Handling Policy, reviewed Whistleblower Management resources for added requirements in the new Aged Care Act 2024, and a helpful spotlight on workplace safety covering key areas in WHS.
Extra Features in SPP
We also made some exciting changes to the SPP platform during the year. In addition to our Board Governance Toolkit which launched late last year, we’ve now added an in-platform Risk Register tool, with an integrated Heat Map, to help providers manage risks across their organisation.
We’ve also made improvements to our document search system, allowing members to search for resources in the Reading Room that match particular Standards, and in many cases individual requirements within those Standards, to streamline the search process and help providers match resources that are going to be of most assistance to the requirements they need to meet.
Looking Forward to 2025
2024 was a busy year in the community and health services sector, and 2025 is already shaping up to be the same. Major legislative developments in both the Disability and Aged Care sectors have recently passed, heralding significant changes to these areas in the new year- and we will be here to help you navigate all the changes you need to know about in 2025.
We’ll be taking some time to celebrate the holidays and the New Year, so our last day in the office for the year will be Friday, December 20 and we’ll be back on Monday, January 6, but if you need urgent assistance over that time, we’ll still be monitoring our inbox and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
All of our best wishes over the holiday season!
