Solutions to resolve contemporary Australian care challenges need unified action, which is why Flinders University’s Caring Futures Institute (CFI) is driving research to inform changes to ensure better health, aged and social care for all Australians.
Professor Rebecca Golley and the CFI team hosted a forum in 2023 with stakeholders from key health, early education, disability, aged care and social services stakeholders, along with community representatives, to discuss what aspects of care systems are delivering quality experiences and outcomes, and what needs improvement.
Through this they aimed to promote shared aspirations that could be articulated through a co-designed statement to serve as a beacon for action.
The resulting publication – A ‘True North Statement for Care’: Charting the course to better care for all Australians – contains five ambition statements and 39 descriptors to define care quality and delivery, and is designed to shift the narrative from ‘deficit dialogues’ in health, aged and social care in Australia, to instead focus on positive actions to deliver improvement.
“With the True North Statement for Care, we want to promote collective action. We aimed to generate a series of ambition statements that represent what peak care stakeholders in Australia want our health, aged and social care to look like in the future,” says Professor Golley.
“It was a necessary discussion because we know our health, education, aged and social care systems are not delivering the quality of care and outcomes that we, collectively as Australians, expect.
Therefore, we need to be more united in our vision of what forward steps need to be taken to realise our ambitions.”
Professor Golley believes Flinders CFI sits in a unique position to steer such important summit discussions. “It underlines Flinders’ position in taking a shared leadership role in this conversation, built on what we have already achieved and continue to do at CFI to ensure the best care is accessible for all across the course of their lives”.
“It’s all consistent with the vision of Flinders’ Caring Futures Institute and the broader College of Nursing and Health Sciences’ strategic plan that is creating a better culture of care. Through successful partnerships across the systems that deliver care, we are ensuring that we work together to create a care system we all want to experience, and that we can see our future workforce flourishing in.”
Reaching consensus to shape a cohesive True North Statement for Care was a strong outcome, and the path forward will see key players promote and use this shared vision. CFI will also work with individual stakeholders to make sure the aspirations and ambitions of the True North statement become embedded in the policy levers that bring about change – whether it be in strategic plans, action plans, or guidelines, through to how to train and empower the health, aged and social care workforces.
Professor Golley notes that many key points in the True North statement align with sentiments expressed in the Flinders Wicked Problems report, which surveyed 300,000 Australians to highlight their top concerns in our society.
“This aligns with Flinders’ vision to make a difference and to do research that understand and works with the complexity that shapes the modern context,” she says. “We are garnering the partnerships to inform our research as well as translate our research into policy and practice. This will ensure our research is fit for purpose and can be integrated into the systems and strategies that make a difference to people in their daily lives.
“This will help drive the implementation of CFI’s five-year strategic plan, but even more important is that we have a range of trusted partnerships across these systems and embedded researchers through our joint-positions. Our ways of working are to plan research goals together, and work towards changing the experience of care locally, nationally and internationally.”
Professor Golley says she is grateful to the partners and stakeholders who were involved in the forum, and appreciates the patience shown as the final outcomes were refined.
“Taking the time to share, reflect, refine gives us great confidence, to know that we have put forward an outcome that has truly solid foundations, and true purpose,” she says.
“By continuing to work together, advocating for positive change and implementing a care compass, we can deliver high-quality, person-centred and integrated care for a better future. It’s an important initiative to change the way we value, talk about, do, own and research care.”