Grant: Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), 2024, Ageing and Aged Care Mission - Dementia, Ageing and Aged Care Grant Opportunity.
Project total: $2.9 million.
Grant term: 2025 - 2030.
Chief Investigators: Prof. L Xiao (Lead), Prof. G Harvey, Prof. S George, Assoc. Prof. R Milte, Assoc. Prof. S Ullah, Assoc. Prof. H Chen Chang, Dr. M Lawless, Dr. K Tran, Dr. Y Yu, C (Shan) Xie, A Howard, M Sophou Pronia, K Leung Chiu, A Cheng, Assoc. Prof. R Bilton (ARIIA Lead).
Summary: This project aims to build collaboration among aged care providers, Carer Gateway providers and Primary Health Networks to scale up a culturally tailored iSupport model for carers of people with dementia from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
The model will address inequalities in accessing support services for CALD dementia carers. The expected outcomes are improved health, quality of life for CALD carers and their care recipients and the cost-benefits of the care model.
Why this project matters: Culturally tailored support aims to help CALD carers overcome health system access discrimination barriers and reduce the associated higher levels of care burden, care crisis, preventable hospital admissions, emergency department use and high health and social costs.
ARIIA’s role in the project: ARIIA is a key partner is this culturally tailored iSupport (CT-iSupport) project and brings to the project team extensive knowledge and experience in aged care sector workforce training and capability building.
ARIIA’s contribution includes the hosting, delivery and management of an interactive online education program for CT-iSupport providers which will be codesigned by the CT-iSUPPORT team led by Prof Xiao. ARIIA’s contribution is led by Chief Investigator Dr. Rebecca Bilton, Program and Research Director, working with ARIIA’s training facilitators and content developers, Julie Goodburn, Irene Scales and Tara Lloyd.
ARIIA will contribute to the optimisation of the education program and maintain education resources, including multilingual iSupport programs. Through this work, a Community of Practice will be developed and maintained by ARIIA to enable project partners to share their experiences and disseminate the CT-iSupport trial to new partners.
This MRFF grant funded project builds on from a successful study conducted by Flinders University researchers in collaboration with three industry partners funded by the ARIIA Grant program to culturally adapt the original iSupport training program developed by the World Health Organisation for the Chinese-Australian Community.
For more information:
- Visit Flinders Universities blog into the iSupport project
- The ARIIA blog on the Chinese version of the iSupport project
- Details of funding and outcomes of the ARIIA Grant Funded iSupport project
- Information related to the MRFF Grant Award