Support Female Workers Over 50 in the Caring Workforce

The Hub ​​is one of 5 Australian recipients in the first round of the Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia Grant program. In partnership with Flinders University and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute the Hub has trialled interventions to improve the experience of working in aged care and support improved Quality of Life for Staff.

Resthaven, Bene, Barossa Village and Kalyra implemented SAMHRI’s Be Well Co wellbeing program and/or a roster stability program to support staff’s Quality of Life through 2023.

We know from the research we have done with Resident Quality of Life that there is significant interaction between staff and resident Quality of Life Outcomes.

We found that SAHMRI’s Be Well Co wellbeing and positive psychology program significantly improved participants quality of life outcomes and Psychological wellbeing including improved emotional exhaustion outcomes (an indicator of burnout risk)

The Roster Stability program also showed significant outcomes with turnover intention significantly reduced for participants. ie they are less likely to leave their employer in the next 12 months.

Further work is being done to isolate outcomes for residents. Whilst the locations involved in the pilot showed an improvement in Quality of Life outcomes for residents more work is needed to demonstrate this relates to the staff programs and not other factors.

Due to the limitations of the grant budget and uneven participant numbers in the project groups (due in part to COVID impacts) further measures did not reach significance.

The Final Report for the project is available here.

And a implementation guide looking at the learnings of the project here.

The Hub would like to thank ARIIA and the aged care partnership program that has made this project possible along with SAHMRI and the Caring Futures Institute for their collaboration bring evidenced based-expertise to the project.