A small part of the picture
The Uniting household model and its place in the future of aged care .
Saviour Buhagiar interviewed by Conor Burke
Uniting Aged Care recently celebrated the opening of its new Amala aged care home in Canberra .
Following their small scale ‘ household model ’ of care , the 124-bed home aims to give residents greater freedom as they live in households with 18 to 20 other people .
Small scale living has been a big part of Uniting ’ s delivery of aged care since 2015 , and a recent independent report of Uniting ’ s household model , conducted by the University of Technology Sydney , found that it increases residents ’ sense of choice and control .
The study , conducted over two years , also found that staff feel like they have more autonomy in this model , while residents feel they are able to maintain a sense of normality as well as some meaning and purpose in their day .
Uniting director of Ageing Saviour Buhagiar joined Aged Care Insite to talk about the build , Uniting ’ s outlook on aged care and his views on transparency in the sector in the wake of the royal commission and the government ’ s budget response .
ACI : You ’ ve just celebrated the opening of the Uniting Amala Aged Care Home in Canberra South operating under the
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Household is one component of what aged care reform is going to be about . But there are so many others . household model of care . Tell us a bit about the project . SB : That ’ s a model that we ’ ve been introducing over the last four or five years or so . It ’ s all about trying to put residents at the centre of decision-making and also encourage our staff and our teams to work with residents to maximise their choice and control in everyday matters , whether it be about when they wake up , about their food , their menus , how they ’ re treated or how they ’ re spoken to . All those kind of basic daily choices that you and I make every day , and making sure that we encourage our residents to do that as well .
A 124-bed home sounds big . How do you get that number of beds under the household model ? We ’ ve created six households . Each household operates pretty much independently with its team of staff . We have a leadership role in each house and a homemaker in each house , and their role is to really bring the residents together , families , other people who also engage in the household as well , and really try to say , ‘ Well , how are we going to operate our day ? How are we going to work our day ?’ That covers everything from meals to activities to just basically how we ’ re going to communicate . And also how are we going to make sure that each individual is able to do their thing on a particular day .
We know that a lot of the academics and research says this is the best way to go , but it ’ s a bit of a move away from the usual approach for bigger providers . Does it come with particular challenges ? It does come with challenges . We ’ ve implemented the model in probably about 60 per cent of our household homes formally across the state . So we ’ re supporting about 5,000 people across
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