National Ageing Research Institute in partnership with the Silver Chain Group Homes has been awarded an ARIIA grant for their ‘Implementing Technology-Supported Home-based Care for Older Australians’ project.
Many older Australians receive home-based aged care services, and the use of home-care services in Australia has increased 3-fold over the last 10 years (AIHW 2022), resulting in severe shortages of staff to deliver home-care packages (Royal Commission 2019). A lack of adequate and timely access to home-based aged care services results in higher mortality, and increased likelihood of transition to permanent residential aged care (Visvanathan 2019).
Urgent solutions are required to improve staff capacity and capability. One solution is to adopt multidisciplinary approaches to home-based care by complementing traditional face-to-face approaches with technology-supported options. This will improve the care for older people by enabling their highest level of independence in the home setting despite staff shortages.
Many technologies are available and being rapidly integrated into use. Before technology-supported approaches can be implemented, an understanding of the comfortability, acceptability, competency, enablers and barriers in using technological solutions among clients, staff, and organisations is needed. Silverchain have undertaken initial pilot work to understand these factors with their community clients. NARI and Silverchain, through co-design methods, will identify the technological capacity of the aged care workforce to integrate technology into the care they provide in the home.