The Aged Care Quality Standards are an important part of an organisation’s quality and compliance benchmarking. However, for providers looking to go beyond their baseline obligations, SPP hosts a number of best practice self-assessments for aged care. These guidelines and standards are designed to complement your ACQS compliance, and provide further guidance across targeted areas of service delivery and governance.
Aged Care – Clinical Governance
The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has developed guidance on clinical governance in aged care to assist aged care providers to develop and review their clinical governance framework.
We’ve made digesting that guidance easier for providers. By working through our Aged Care – Clinical Governance self-assessment module, you can identify key issues that need to be addressed in a clinical governance framework, as well as identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.
Aged Care Diversity Framework
The Aged Care Diversity Framework was developed by the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care. The Aged Care Diversity Framework includes four Diversity Action Plans which are designed to help providers address barriers faced by different groups, being all diverse older people, older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, older CALD people, and LGBTI elders.
We have a self-assessment module for each of the Action Plans, which allows providers to work through three different levels, according to what is most relevant to their organisation: foundational actions, next steps and leading the way.
Inclusive Service Standards
The Inclusive Service Standards were developed by the Centre for Cultural Diversity in Ageing to assist aged care providers in the development and the delivery of inclusive services to all consumers.
They provide a framework for services to adapt and improve their services and organisational practices so they are welcoming, safe and accessible.
Meeting the performance measures listed in this assessment provides evidence that an organisation has embedded an inclusive, non-discriminatory approach to its delivery of care and services.
Dementia Australia Quality Care Recommendations
Dementia Australia’s Quality Care Recommendations have been developed by people living with dementia, their families and carers in the context of the new Aged Care Quality Standards. Each of the eight Standards has a dementia-specific recommendation on how that Standard needs to be met when providing any aged care service to a person living with dementia, their families, carers and advocates.
This module provides organisations with further insight and direction on each of the Aged Care Quality Standards, through the lens of dementia-friendly care.
National Guidelines for Spiritual Care in Aged Care
The National Guidelines for Spiritual Care in Aged Care were developed by Meaningful Ageing Australia, who state:
Spirituality is integral to quality of life and well-being, and should be accessible to all older people in a way that is meaningful to their beliefs, culture and circumstances.
The Guidelines are designed specifically for offering spiritual care and support to older people living in residential aged care, or receiving care and support through home care packages. They are intended to support organisations to embed spirituality into key systems and processes with the goal that all older people (and their loved ones) are offered best-practice in spiritual care.
ACSA Wellness and Reablement Roadmap
The Wellness and Reablement Roadmap was developed by ACSA to help CHSP providers to self-assess their progress in integrating wellness and reablement principles into core service delivery.
Taking a wellness and reablement approach to service design and delivery enables service providers to focus on outcomes for individuals rather than service outputs.
The Wellness and Reablement Roadmap provides a framework for discussions at all levels within an organisation to help providers identify “what they are doing well” and “what actions need to be taken to improve performance” in progressing, managing and measuring wellness and reablement.
Want to learn more?
Our modules for the standards and guidelines detailed above are available in SPP under the Aged Care – towards best practice drop-down header. They can be accessed and progressed at any time, at your own pace, as relevant to the needs of your organisation. You can automatically generate a quality improvement plan for each specific module you follow.