Background and Aims
Older people in residential aged care (RAC) are a key at-risk group for experiencing social isolation and loneliness. This project built on a previous feasibility study, involving a partnership between two non-profit aged care service providers and two universities, to develop a Social Connection Toolkit for residential aged care. The project aimed to design, implement and evaluate a toolkit, so aged care staff are supported to have comfortable conversations with residents to understand resident’s individual, personal social connection preferences.
What We Did
A Social Connection Toolkit was developed that includes a conversational style tool co-designed with residents and aged care staff, an easy-to-use guide to using the Tool and five short e-learning training modules for staff to understand key concepts about social connection, including its health and wellbeing benefits for older people and how to support social connection in RAC.
The Toolkit was tested on 80 residents and 29 staff members across four facilities in New South Wales and Victoria. Surveys and observations were carried out, and interviews were conducted with 16 residents and 15 staff members to evaluate the usefulness of the Social Connection Toolkit in facilitating conversations and collecting information about resident’s social connection needs and wants.
Outcomes
The evaluation of the Toolkit found that it enabled residents to express their social connection preferences as well as their concerns about poor social connection opportunities. In some cases, the Tool was found to facilitate greater social connection between staff and residents. The Toolkit was accepted in the practice environment, with majority of staff recommending its uptake and continued use, replacing existing tools used to collect information about social connection. At organisation-level barriers to uptake include care staff shortages, lack of ‘counting’ social connection provision and lack of championing by some managers.
Impact on Aged Care Workforce
Aged care staff can use the Social Connection Toolkit to learn about social connection and its importance for resident health and wellbeing. Aged care service providers can collect information about residents’ social connection preferences and use this information to implement activities that are in-line with residents’ individual interests, providing person-centred care.
Although the study found that both staff and residents identify social connection to be important for health and wellbeing, currently, aged care staff in Australia do not receive training about social connection. The social connection e-learning modules can be used by staff and volunteers to build knowledge and capacity about how to support social connection for older people living in residential aged care.
Resources Developed
The Social Connection Toolkit for Residential Aged Care is publicly available and free to use.
The Social Connection Tool, Social Connection Tool Guide, Social Connection E-learning Modules for Aged Care Staff and the Social Connection Toolkit for Residential Aged Care: Design and Evaluation Report are available at: https://www.swinburne.edu.au/research/institutes/social-innovation/social-connection/.
Lessons Learned
A social connection toolkit and training package for staff was codesigned with residents. The Toolkit enabled conversations with residents about their social connection preferences. The toolkit was generally well-accepted by staff who used it to target personalised social activities for residents. The evaluation highlighted the opportunity to standardise documentation of social connection preferences, interventions and outcomes.
Next Steps
Project partners Uniting NSW, ACT and The Salvation Army Aged Care are using findings to inform enhanced RAC resident social connection.
