Delivering relationship-centred quality in aged care

This week’s session of the Dementia Australia National Symposium Series 2020 – Dementia care is quality care will highlight the importance of relationship-centred quality and how aged care homes can determine if they are delivering it.

Dr Lisa Trigg, Assistant Director of Research, Data and Intelligence at Social Care Wales (UK), will be presenting on the topic at the fourth instalment of the Symposium Series.

“A relationship-centred approach to quality is the best type of quality, where the person needing care is treated as an individual with his or her own personality, regardless of their health issues,” Dr Trigg said.

“It is being cared for by someone in a compassionate and supportive reciprocal relationship – even though someone may be in the late stages of dementia, they are still a person with their own individuality and personality.”

In last week’s Symposium Series session, Janet Anderson PSM, Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner, discussed quality in the context of the Aged Care Quality Standards.

Dr Trigg’s presentation will encourage participants to think more broadly about quality – the concept of relationship-centred quality will be explained, delegates will have the opportunity to reflect upon their own organisations, the type of quality they are concerned with and assessing how well this is being achieved.

Dr Trigg has studied quality improvement in long-term care and currently supports people working in care in Wales with evidence and research to inform policy and service design.

She was called to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety on the area of person-centred care.

Before joining Social Care Wales, Lisa spent seven years as a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science with much of it comparing the approaches of different governments to improving the quality of long-term care, including the systems of several European countries, Australia, Japan and the United States.

The Symposium Series is the culmination of the Dementia Australia Quality Care Initiative, a project that has focused on raising the quality of dementia care.

“This is excellent timing for Dementia Australia’s National Symposium to discuss quality care – and how human rights need to be at the centre of how it is delivered,” Dr Trigg said.

“I look forward to presenting this session that will explore different understandings of quality, how it is defined and the implications for providing quality support and care to people living with dementia.”

Still to come in the Symposium Series are presentations from Dementia Advocates as well as Prof Dawn Brooker, Director of the University of Worcester Association for Dementia Studies UK; James Adonis, author and leadership educator; and Ita Buttrose AC OBE, Dementia Australia Ambassador and Chair ABC.

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