Flinders University in partnership with Uniting AgeWell Ltd and the National Ageing Research Institute (NARI) has been awarded an ARIIA grant for their project ‘Talking Mental Health: Implementing practice to improve the mental health of older adults receiving home care services’.
Older adults are at high risk for mental health problems, and these problems are not currently adequately identified or addressed by the aged care system. Community aged care services provide regular, personal contact with older people living in the community. As such, the community care workforce is well placed to help bridge the current gap that exists in mental health service provision for older adults.
The Talking Mental Health Project is a collaboration between leading community aged care service provider Uniting AgeWell and researchers. This project targets key barriers to older adults’ access to mental health services: aged care staff skill and confidence in identifying mental health needs and supporting the person to access care for those needs. The objective of the project is to implement effective strategies to improve the identification of mental health needs among aged care users and promote access to mental health services where needed.
By co-designing care protocols and evaluating the effectiveness of implementation, this project will provide resources to support the whole aged care sector to better identify and meet mental health needs, for the benefit of the more than 170,000 Australians who access community aged care each year.