Outcome Statement
The governing body must lead a culture of quality, safety and inclusion that supports aged care workers to provide quality funded aged care services by focussing on continuous improvement, embracing diversity and prioritising the safety, health and wellbeing of aged care workers.
Actions
The governing body leads a positive culture of quality funded aged care services and continuous improvement and demonstrates that this culture exists within the organisation.
In strategic and business planning, the governing body:
a) prioritises the safety, health and wellbeing of aged care workers
b) proactively engages, listens, consults with aged care workers to leverage their expertise in delivering quality funded aged care services to individuals
c) communicates information to aged care workers that is relevant to aged care workers’ safety to support their delivery of quality funded aged care services
d) adheres to legislative requirements, and active consideration is given to organisational and operational risks, workforce needs and the wider organisational environment.
Why is this outcome important?
Outcome 2.2a explains providers’ obligations to make sure their governing body involves workers in the strategic and business planning, and governance of aged care services. This needs to have a focus on continuous improvement.
The governing body must monitor the aged care services you provide through regular reviews. They must actively consider legislative requirements and the wider organisational, operational and workforce risks and needs. This helps you to deliver safe and quality care and services. It includes evaluating:
- how effective your aged care services are
- the safety and wellbeing of workers.
By engaging, listening to and consulting workers and reviewing relevant quality and safety data, the governing body can identify areas for improvement. This is important to make sure your strategic and business planning addresses the needs of workers and older people. Where information relates to workers’ safety, the governing body should communicate relevant information to workers to support their delivery of quality care.
This helps the governing body to lead a positive culture of continuous improvement and quality care and services that are accessible and appropriate.
You need to give focus to:
- strategic and business planning.
All providers delivering aged care services in a residential care home or home or community setting are expected to regularly report to their governing body and work together to support workers to deliver quality care and services. However, the way providers delivering aged care services in a home or community setting work with their governing body to assess performance and drive continuous improvement within their workforce may differ from aged care services delivered in a residential care home. This is because organisational governance can be more complex in home or community settings. For example, where organisations:
- sub-contract some or all of the services delivered
- have a high proportion of workers that are sub-contractors
A lack of direct oversight where services are subcontracted means that providers and their governing body may be less able to directly support workers to identify deficiencies in care and continuously improve their practice.
To lead a positive culture of quality care and services, governing bodies of organisations delivering aged care services in a home or community setting may embed a culture of self-assurance where the provider can independently and critically assess their performance on an ongoing basis. This can support workers to deliver quality care by making sure they can:
- meet their obligations
- appropriately address identified risks, incidents, emergencies and disasters
- proactively identify areas for improvement in ways that value their diversity, leverage their expertise, and prioritise their safety and wellbeing.
Key tasks
Providers
Providers
Report concerns about the organisation’s culture of quality care and services.
Regularly report quality performance information and performance monitoring to the governing body (Outcome 2.3).
Gather and report information about your organisation’s quality, safety and inclusion culture (Outcome 2.3) and provide this to your governing body to support their strategic and business planning for workers. This information can come from:
- feedback and complaints from workers (Outcome 2.6a)
- older people’s aged care service documents (Outcome 3.1)
- results from evaluating workers’ performance and how well they’re using the quality system (Outcome 2.9).
Review this information to encourage continuous improvement in how you and your workers deliver aged care services in your day-to-day operations.
Make sure workers follow the Code of Conduct for Aged Care. This will help your organisation and workers to:
- promote a safe and inclusive environment
- protect older people from harm.
Talk with workers to:
- leverage their expertise in delivering quality aged care services to older people
- find out their needs for safety, health and wellbeing. Prioritise and monitor the safety, health and wellbeing of your workers. Do this by following the governing body’s strategic and business plan. For example, identify instances where you haven’t met workforce health and safety needs. This can include one-off occurrences or organisation-wide issues. You may find this through feedback and complaints from workers (Outcome 2.6a). Report this to the governing body.
The guidance for Outcome 2.8 has more information on supporting and maintaining a satisfied and psychologically safe workforce.
Resolve issues in a timely way by using the processes in your:
- incident management system (Outcome 2.5)
- risk management system (Outcome 2.4)
- feedback and complaints management system (Outcome 2.6a).
Further resources about this outcome can be found on the Commission's Quality Standards Resource Centre.
