FAQs

Healthy@home is a consortium of 18 leading organisations committed to providing high quality community aged care services in the Brisbane North and Caboolture regions of Queensland to help older people maximise their independence and remain living at home.

The consortium includes community aged care service providers, government and nongovernment agencies, peak bodies and advocacy groups. Our workforce exceeds 1000 clinical and non-clinical support staff across all member organisations and we provide services to nearly 8000 older people every year.

We have the capacity to deliver tailored, personalised services because we share expertise and program information to respond to our clients’ needs.

Through the involvement of Brisbane North PHN, we have better communication channels with healthcare services, general practice and hospitals, which allows us to develop a holistic, system-wide response. We also have peak bodies and advocacy groups involved in our management and coordinator meetings to inform our strategic direction.

We also invest in training to keep our care workers up-to-date. The consortium uses its pooled resources to sponsor staff professional development, including clinical and CPD training as well as conference attendance, e.g. Collaboration for Impact. We host workshops such as Motivational Interviewing and EDIE dementia training, and run quarterly aged care forums to support and develop the capacity of our local aged care sector.

Consortium members have a shared vision and goal to deliver high quality services and increase access to community aged care in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for eligible clients.

Each of the 12 service provider members has over 20 years’ experience and is accredited to provide aged care services in its own right. Each brings their distinctive and extensive expertise to the consortium.

All healthy@home organisations are not-for profit, which means that all funds are invested in supporting better client care through capacity building opportunities, initiating innovative research such as the Active at Home pilot project, and enhancing the broader aged care sector e.g. through our regular aged care forums.

Healthy@home is delivering new and vital services within the region. Our focus is on meeting the changing needs and preferences of our clients, so we take a nimble, client-centred approach to service delivery. To achieve this, the consortium includes providers experienced in supporting people with diverse needs, characteristics and life experiences, who may have experienced exclusion, discrimination and stigma during their lives or who are part of a culturally and linguistically diverse group.

This is important because our clients display the same diversity of characteristics and life experiences as the broader population. For example, 20 per cent of our clients were born overseas and 10 per cent are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Note that prior to our formation there was no Indigenous specific service provider in the area.

Our approach means we have frontline staff who can speak to clients in many languages and we have the capacity to deliver tailored, personalised services because we share data, expertise and program information to identify and respond to our clients’ needs. This supports the development of a holistic system that allows clients to stay connected to their community (through social support and community transport), improves their physical wellbeing (through Active at Home), and provides access to clinical care (through allied health and nursing services).

We have utilised our collective resources to fund innovative research and development into service approaches that deliver better outcomes for clients. These include the Active at Home pilot project, which trialled an exercise and wellness program, and resulted in a 19 per cent reduction in clients classified as frail. We also completed a Workforce Wellness Needs Assessment Project, which looked at workforce capabilities to support care workers in providing wellness-based services.

We are now delivering a national rollout of the Active at Home program and are working towards a shared consumer outcomes measurement system to begin 1 July 2019. In response to the Workforce Wellness Needs Assessment project research findings, we are developing an evidence-based training framework to support aged care providers in embedding a wellness approach in the delivery of client services.

We will continue to provide leadership in the sector through our facilitation of sector-wide aged care forums to share knowledge and experience, strengthening clinical governance among service providers, improving our internal and external communications and planning Centre-based Respite consultation with providers and consumers.

Brisbane North PHN plays a vital role in managing healthcare and support programs in the community and supporting health care professionals to deliver positive health outcomes. The Australian Government established 31 PHNs across Australia in 2015 to improve patient care and to make health care in Australia more efficient and effective.

The PHN created the healthy@home consortium, based on a Collective Impact framework, by bringing together leading organisations with a common agenda to improve aged care delivery and client outcomes. The PHN leads the consortium as part of the broader strategic work it undertakes to improve coordination of care within the region.

Brisbane North PHN supports clinicians and communities in Brisbane’s northern suburbs, Moreton Bay Regional Council and parts of Somerset Regional Council. It covers approximately 4,100 km² of urban, regional and rural areas, with a population of over one million.

All PHNs conduct health needs assessments of the communities in their region. These assessments help identify groups of people who need more resources, programs and services. The information helps PHNs to tailor health services to meet their community’s particular needs. The health priorities identified through Brisbane North PHN’s health needs assessment and relevant to healthy@home include:

• coordinated care for older people
• culturally responsive services to enhance the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• better support for those with chronic and complex conditions across the care continuum, and
• improved access to health and community care in Moreton Bay North.