Xanthe Golenko, Anna Fowke, Georgina Johnstone, Judy Lowthian

Bolton Clarke

Stories are central to human connection, communication, and cognition. They are integral to our culture and identity and enable us to learn, celebrate, heal, and remember.

Storytelling is a powerful way of giving voice to people who may be unheard or invisible. Its transformative nature helps people make sense of experiences in their lives and empowers them to reflect, respond and react. It links us together with others and with things that are important to us.

Life story work is an intervention that has been conducted in residential care homes to support personhood and promote person-centred care. It is recognised for providing residents with an opportunity to share and reflect on their life experiences, which can validate their sense of self and value as an individual. It also provides the opportunity for care home staff to get to know residents on a deeper level and see their individuality and uniqueness, which can enhance the quality of interactions and relationships. Building strong relationships can help create a sense of belonging and connectedness, which can reduce feelings of loneliness and social isolation.   
While the benefits of life story work in aged care are well recognised, it is often underutilised due to barriers including time constraints on staff, and potential risks and concerns about evoking painful memories. In response, Bolton Clarke has developed a storytelling program for residential aged care and is trialling an innovative approach to implementation that addresses resource constraints and maximises benefits for all. 

The Bolton Clarke Storytelling Program explores and celebrates the stories and life learnings of residents through group work (story circles) and individual story projects (life story books, posters and digital stories). It is designed to facilitate choice and inclusiveness while catering to the diverse needs and preferences of individual residents. The program is underpinned by a trauma-informed practice framework that draws on SAMHSA’s six trauma-informed principles: Safety and security; Trustworthiness and transparency; Peer support; Collaboration and mutuality; Empowerment, voice and choice; Cultural, historical and gender issues. [1]
Implementation of the Storytelling Program is guided by Meyer’s Implementation Framework for Aged Care [2] to support program fidelity and sustainability. A key component of the implementation strategy is partnering with universities to give health and aged-care workforce students the opportunity to participate in the storytelling program in student placements. The benefits of such partnerships are three-fold:

1. It minimises the burden on the workforce to undertake story work projects with individual residents but enables all care home staff to participate in group sessions; 
2. It gives students the opportunity to participate in a meaningful and rewarding activity with older adults; 
3. It helps develop positive attitudes toward older adults and attracts future workforce to residential aged care.

The program is being evaluated using a Type 3 Hybrid effectiveness-implementation design which permits testing of the implementation while gathering information and observing the effectiveness of the Storytelling Program with a focus on reducing loneliness and social isolation.

*The views and opinions expressed in Knowledge Blogs are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of ARIIA, Flinders University and/or the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.

James Stack

Managing Director
Obvious Choice

Susan Boyle is best known for her unexpected success on the show ‘Britain’s Got Talent.’ When she arrived on stage during her audition the audience and the judges were cynical. Everyone had decided what to expect from the 47-year-old, unemployed spinster based on their own personal biases. Susan surprised everyone. Boyle’s rendition of ‘I dreamed a dream’ paved her way to becoming one of the most talked-about and successful performers in the show’s history.

Before Boyle won the world over in 2009, she devoted much of her life to caring for her ailing mother, who died in 2007 at the age of 91.

Over the last year, an increasing number of personal care workers from some of Australia’s most trusted aged care provider brands showed us that unexpected success doesn’t only happen on talent shows. These continuous learners, ranging in age from their early twenties through to their late fifties, participate in microlearning campaigns across topics including dementia care, infection prevention and control, and the serious incident response scheme. For some of these learners, Tagalog is their native language, for others Malayalam or Hindi. Some have only recently learnt English as an Additional Language.

Using a mobile app called Forget Me Not, these personal care workers engage with a new way of learning that delivers frequent five-minute ‘challenges’ most days of the week. Each challenge engages the learner in a text-based conversation and gets them to practice the delivery of safe quality care with virtual older Australians.

The ‘little and often’ approach is backed by neuroscience and research on optimal training delivery techniques. Providing personal care workers with more repetition strengthens memory muscle and makes knowledge recall likely in the moment of need.

Many of these personal care workers developing a daily microlearning habit using their mobile phones aren’t digital natives (a term created by Marc Prensky). These people haven’t grown up in the digital age, in close contact with computers, the Internet, mobile phones, social media, and tablets. Most of them were digital immigrants (people who have had to adapt to the new language of technology). Some were digital refugees (people whose jobs, livelihoods, and lives have been disrupted by the rapid advance of information technology, automation, and artificial intelligence). I sometimes encounter objections from management when I suggest personal care workers can and will embrace a more convenient, accessible, evidence-based approach to their professional development that recognises and rewards mastery of job role knowledge.

Managers are sometimes cynical about personal care workers’ ‘potential’ and propensity for continuous learning, much like the judges on the British talent show. This cynicism is often based on their experience of getting personal care workers to complete eLearning or attend classroom training.

However, much like Susan Boyle, these personal care workers surprise everyone. These busy workers embrace the chance to learn regularly using their mobile phones (rather than occasionally on a computer or in a training session), with most of them finding ways to fit the learning into gaps within their daily schedule. Some enjoy the opportunity to learn from home. All of them find a way to fit some learning into their day at a time and place that best suits them. They revel in the flexibility, the freedom, and the recognition.

Learning is often its own reward but in this case, the learning also results in knowledge mastery leading to a sense of confidence that builds better outcomes for everyone in these people’s care.
 

James Stack is the Managing Director of Obvious Choice, an award-winning learning design and technology firm. His team developed the Forget Me Not microlearning app used by forward-thinking aged care providers committed to better staff training using evidence-based approaches.

 

The views and opinions expressed in Knowledge Blogs are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of ARIIA, Flinders University and/or the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.