The ‘Home Care Today’ project ran from 2013 to June 2017. COTA Australia continues to provide access to Home Care Today resources which were current at June 2017. However they are no longer monitored or updated, and information may not be current.
Co-production tools and resources (Step Forward)
Community West Inc. and COTA (Australia) were funded by the Department of Health (2015 to June 2017) to help the aged care services sector incorporate co-production into organisational service design, resulting in better outcomes for all. This project has been working with 10 providers across Australia to trial the co-production of services in the aged care sector, focussing on wellness.
The excellent video, Step Forward – Together Documentary, has been produced to highlight some key learnings and outcomes in all ten settings. The examples demonstrate that co-production has enabled providers to better understand consumers and work collaboratively to develop solutions to better meet consumer needs.
VIEW video: Step Forward – Together Documentary
Toolkit and Resource Guide
A toolkit and resource guide has been developed to assist providers to implement co-production activities.
DOWNLOAD the Toolkit and Resource Guide: Step Forward Together Toolkit and Resource Guide
Consumer engagement assessment
Co-production is a way of providers and consumers working together to improve and tailor services.
COTA Australia through Home Care Today recently worked with aged care provider Uniting AgeWell (UAW) to take a closer look at the co-production journey. Since UAW already had a number of consumer engagement activities underway, the aim of the project was to streamline and strengthen UAW’s consumer engagement practice.
To do this, we followed a simple process, beginning by working together to identify good examples of co-design and other consumer engagement practices already happening in UAW’s Community Care Services. Home Care Today wrote up these practices, which the UAW management team then discussed. UAW assessed its own practices against the ‘Ladder of participation’, looking at what point it had reached in the journey to transformational co-production, and at the same time coming to a deeper understanding of what consumer co-production is. Finally, UAW developed a set of principles to guide co-production in the organisation. These principles were shared across the organisation, and UAW is now thinking of creative ways to encourage future co-production activities.
Our report on the project, Developing co-production principles: Uniting AgeWell’s Journey, details the five-step process that helped UAW to assess its consumer engagement and co-production activities and provided the impetus for its next steps.
DOWNLOAD the full report: Developing co-production principles: Uniting AgeWell’s Journey
Other co-production resources
In 2014 Home Care Today launched a co-production project initiative to encourage Home Care Package providers to systematically embrace consumer engagement. Three organisations were part of this project. These service providers scoped and implemented co-production projects in their organisations. A report has been prepared outlining project outputs, shedding light on key lessons learned. An action agenda is proposed to further enhance co-production in a consumer directed aged care environment. You can find the report here.
DOWNLOAD resource: Co-Creating Value – Lessons Learned from Home Care Today’s Action Research Inspired Co-Production Projects