Age Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA), established in 2020, was founded in response to the Aged Care Workforce Strategy Taskforce report, A Matter of Care – Australia’s Aged Care Workforce Strategy in 2018. ARIIA’s mission is to unite researchers, end users, investors, and educators to translate research and technology into practical evidence-based solutions that enhance the aged care workforce and improve service and care delivery. In parallel, between 2018 and 2021, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety investigated the quality of aged care services in Australia. Its objective was to assess whether services were meeting the needs of the community and identify areas for improvement. The Royal Commission’s recommendations focused on improving governance, enhancing care standards, and promoting a shift towards consumer-driven, person-centred care models. The Australian Government responded by committing $17 billion over five years to a comprehensive reform agenda. This initiative supports the introduction of a new regulatory framework and expands the availability of home care packages. It also promotes workforce development initiatives, enhances the use of technology and new systems, reduces the cost of medicines, provides specialist support for people with dementia, and fosters better integration of health and aged care services. In 2024, the Aged Care Taskforce, established to explore future funding models for aged care, released its recommendations. The taskforce emphasised the critical need to foster innovation in the sector, urging providers to develop and scale innovative care models, invest in technology, and advance research into best practices. ARIIA’s role, funded by Government until early 2027, is to meet this critical need by building the capability of the workforce and providers to implement change founded in innovation and best practice.

Key messages:

• Australian long-term care (aged care) is undergoing significant reform, with the government spearheading various policy initiatives, programs, and campaigns aimed at enhancing care to better meet the diverse needs of the aged care community.
• The aged care sector requires innovative, evidence-based solutions to deliver cost-effective care that meets the growing needs of an ageing population with complex health challenges, while also reducing the task-based workload of aged care workers.
• ARIIA’s role is to support the workforce in driving grassroots change by building capability to identify, adapt and adopt evidence-based solutions to address sector and workforce challenges.
• To address these sector challenges, ARIIA has developed a range of educational tools and research products, alongside capability development programs to foster innovative practices, implementation tools to effectively translate evidence into action, while working with industry partners, to co-develop new products for the aged care market.

Four priority areas

Since 2022, ARIIA has responded to this need for innovation and knowledge translation in four ways:

1. Knowledge and implementation Hub (KIH): Knowledge synthesis, supporting implementation & evaluation. Co-designed evidence, tools, and practice resources in multiple formats. Increasing access to quality, relevant and trustworthy evidence for the aged care sector.
2. Innovator Training Program (ITP): Problem identification, implementation, and evaluation. Developing aged care workforce translational knowledge and skills. Facilitating the development of implementable local projects. Creating a Community of Practice to support ongoing learning and knowledge exchange.
3. Aged care partnering program (ACPP): Knowledge generation, implementation, and evaluation. Incubating evidence-informed solutions and innovative ideas into robust projects ready for implementation. Building a collaboration of stakeholders and experts to co-design scalable innovations for the aged care sector.
4. ARIIA Grants Program: Problem identification, knowledge generation, implementation, and evaluation. $16.9 million (AUS) project funding to support high-quality research studies that address important gaps in aged care workforce capability and knowledge, leading to relevant, translational research findings for the benefit of the sector.

All four components work in unison to support the workforce in driving transformative change at the frontlines of care delivery. The Knowledge and Implementation Hub (KIH) and Innovator Training Program (ITP) laid the groundwork for evidence-based knowledge in the sector, providing training in the skills required to identify, implement, and evaluate projects or ideas. Meanwhile, the Aged Care Partnering Program (ACCP) helped innovators bring new ideas and products to the aged care market. While the grant funding program, empowered organisations to implement solutions addressing industry-identified challenges.

Outcomes 2022-2024

• KIH –We produced a suite of ten sector-identified topics in collaboration with workforce advisory groups. To support these, we conducted scoping reviews of systematic review evidence, identifying key themes and creating automated PubMed searches for easy access to the latest research. We also performed online environmental scans to gather relevant resources for each theme. The currently developed topics are: Clinical governance; Dementia care; Rehabilitation, reablement & restorative care; Mental health & wellbeing; Meaningful lifestyle activities; Palliative care & end of life; Social isolation; Staff burnout; Technology in aged care; Urgent and critical needs. To support ongoing evidence identification, we also created additional research and projects supports, in the form of the Aged care search collection (automated searches using PubMed database), an aged care systematic review collection (updated monthly) and additional information surrounding implementation approaches, older people, carers and organisations or programs relevant to aged care.
• ITP – The program produced short ‘essential’ training tools and a full action-learning based innovation program to support participants in developing projects that created change in their organisations. This included three ‘themed’ rounds focusing on: Reablement; Nutrition and Workforce retention. Working with over six hundred participants, from fifty-one organisations, across seventy-seven projects in the past two years, the program supports grassroots change and innovation and builds capacity in the workforce to continue to make positive improvements to meet the targets of the national reform agenda.
• ACCP – Working across the industry and the sector the program partnered with thirty-eight groups, introducing these to thirty-six different stakeholders to build relationships to support innovation, with twenty new technology solutions showcased.
• ARIIA Grant funding – Provided $16.9 million (AUS) between sixty-two projects, alongside $7.7 million, from sector co-contributions to test new innovations and solutions to improve care and services.

All four elements of ARIIA’s remit support its commitment to enhancing workforce capability and embedding innovation in evidence-based best practices, while equipping the workforce with the skills and expertise needed to effectively implement these in practice. For more information on how to implement change in aged care, visit the ARIIA teams’ scoping review within the JBI evidence implementation series.

ARIIA has recently been re-funded and awarded $13 (AUS) million by the Australian Government to continue this capability building until end of 2027. ARIIA also provides commercial services within Australia and internationally, if you would like to make an enquiry, please email mailto:ariia@ariia.org.au

Authors affiliations and acknowledgements:

Paul DS Ross¹; Rebecca Bilton¹; Jennifer Tieman²; Raechel Damarell¹; Claire Gough¹; Janine Margarita Dizon¹; Amanda Adams¹; Nurul Adnan¹; Bethany Wilton-Harding⁴; Eric Yang²; Alice Windle²; Tania Marin⁵; Sue Gordon²; Carol Davy¹; Lenore de la Perrelle¹; Gillian Harvey²; Karen Reynolds³; Amy Marshall⁵; Robyn Garrick¹; Andrea Cosentino¹; Antonia Zappia¹; Carol Dela Roza¹; Clare Bradley¹; Holly Sparrow¹; Irene Scales¹; Jane Rymell¹; Joanna-lee Tan¹; Julie Goodburn¹; Layla Plummer¹; Liana Donleavy¹; Lynda McArdle¹; Meg Polacsek¹; Nicky Baker¹; Olivia Baird¹; Reuben Jacob¹; Stephanie Champion²; Tara Lloyd¹; Kylie Dixon¹.

Flinders University

¹Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia & College of Health and Nursing Sciences, Flinders University.

²Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia & College of Health and Nursing Sciences, Flinders University & Caring Futures Institute, Flinders University.

³Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia & College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University.

⁴Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia & College of Education, Psychology and Social Work, Flinders University.

⁵Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia & College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University.

ARIIA would also like to acknowledge the support of the Commonwealth Government of Australian (Department of Health and Aged Care), South Australian Government, our partners and advisory group members.

ARIIA is based on the lands of the Kaurna First Nations peoples in South Australia, and we pay our respects to their ancestors and elders, past present and emerging.

Suggested citation

Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (2024) Developing the capability of the long-term workforce in aged care to implement best-practice in Australia. GOLTC Blog, Global Observatory of Long-Term Care, Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science. https://goltc.org/publications/developing-the-capability-of-the-long-term-workforce-in-aged-care-to-implement-best-practice-in-australia/