National Aged Care Rehabilitation and Reablement Roundtables

Rehabilitation, reablement, and restorative care approaches were identified as a priority topic by the aged care sector to build workforce service knowledge and capability to improve the independence and quality of life for older Australians. Despite understanding that these approaches promote high quality of life by enabling people to continue to live independently, and engage in activities they enjoy, the practicalities of delivering these approaches in aged care is more complex.
The aim of these round tables was to understand the experiences and intricacies of integrating rehabilitation into Australian aged care services, to understand the experience of key stakeholders integrating reablement approaches into their care, to identify the barriers and facilitators to embedding such approaches into aged care services and to disseminate findings to inform future aged care service delivery.
From the roundtable discussions, requirements and recommendations were identified to assist the aged care sector integrate rehabilitation and reablement into service delivery. These included the need to attract a skilled workforce, make a career in aged care more attractive, educate older people and their families to understand reablement and how to support independence, improve communication systems, integrate technology, improve the quality of evidence for reablement specific to aged care, and to produce practical resources to support care delivery.
The ARIIA Knowledge Implementation Hub will continue to use the evidence to develop resources to support the aged care sector.