BUILDING BETTER AGED CARE
HOW ‘ANNIE ’ CAN LEAD TO IMPROVED DEMENTIA CARE A NEW APPROACH TO WORKFORCE TRAINING
W
ith almost half a million Australians living with dementia—which is projected to increase to 1.1 million people by 2058—now is the time to have a greater focus on quality dementia care and ensuring continued training and support for the aged care workforce.
real tangible ways to address challenging situations. A worker can take five minutes between clients, or when their client may be resting, in order to learn or refresh some micro-skills to help improve the support they provide.
Educating this workforce has been the focus of Dementia Australia’s Centre for Dementia Learning for over 35 years— with the aim of transforming dementia care through programs and technology that are informed by practice, research and what people living with dementia tell us.
For example, a care worker might be having some challenges with a particular client when it comes to helping them get dressed. This could cause the care worker stress, as well as impact on their time and ability to complete other tasks. The care worker would be encouraged to work through the relevant modules and do a quick refresher before going to see the client.
With the support of Gandel Philanthropy, this year Dementia Australia launched an innovative mobile app, Ask Annie, which improves quality of care for people living with dementia by building the skills of home and community care workers.
Ask Annie applies a person-centred approach to developing skills, which ensures users learn how to put the individual and their needs at the forefront of every interaction and provide quality care for people living with dementia.
Designed in collaboration with community care workers, Ask Annie gives people access to a mobile learning platform that offers short, self-paced learning modules to help care workers refresh their skills and learn tips and techniques to provide better care to people living with dementia.
The app is an enterprise application, meaning organisations purchase a multi-licence package of Ask Annie, which then allows access for individual staff.
‘Annie’ is a virtual community care worker providing support to a person living with dementia at home. She guides users through scenarios based on real life experiences to strengthen their skills in delivering support to people living at home with dementia. As a mobile app, Ask Annie is a convenient training tool that can be used anywhere, anytime and provides learners with the flexibility to decide what and when to learn based on their time and needs. Through delivering dementia education for the past 35 years, we have learnt that home and community care workers often don’t have time to attend workshops or dedicate extensive hours to education and training, so this platform was designed with this in mind. We felt this micro-learning approach would be a more successful way to engage home and community care workers. The modules are intentionally kept short and focused on providing
It can be used by people who have been trained, as well as those with no previous dementia education. Using plain language and supported by video content, it is also suitable for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Innovations such as Ask Annie are providing a new approach to engage aged care workers to learn more about dementia. It is this continual engagement and education of the workforce that has been our focus and we view as an essential part of the journey in delivering quality dementia care. We are excited to see the impact of Ask Annie in helping to engage and educate the workforce and ultimately improving the quality of care for all people living with dementia, their families and carers. Ask Annie will be available for individual download in early 2022. Dr David Sykes is Director, Centre for Dementia Learning, Dementia Australia, and Director, Dementia Training Australia. For more information visit www.dementialearning.org.au
55
