Applications for ARIIA’s ‘Innovative Approaches to Retain Aged Care Workers’ training close 6 October

Next week, applications close for Round 8 of the Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia’s (ARIIA) free training programs.

ARIAA’s training is designed to help aged care providers solve their workforce problems with evidence-based solutions. Round 8, which will run from 23 October to 24 November, will be targeted at innovative approaches to retaining aged care staff.

There are themed Innovative Training Programs (ITP) available, or, if Round 8’s theme does not align with the provider’s needs, there is also an individual ITP program.

ARIIA Senior Research Fellow Dr Rebecca Bilton told The SOURCE, “It's a facilitated learning program where anyone in the aged care sector can come with a workforce or clinical problem that they want to address, and we take them through an online training program that's supplemented by peer discussions, and help them to unpack understanding what their problem actually is, looking at enablers and barriers.

“Then we help them to identify what the best practice evidence for solutions is for their particular interest, and then we help them to adapt that academic evidence into their context and build an implementation and project plan to be able to undertake grassroots innovation, continuous improvement in their local context.

“They leave with transferable skills and a robust project plan that they can then go back and pitch to their organisation.”

Organisations that complete the training receive $2,000 from the government as a contribution towards backfill for the time committed to the program.

The SOURCE: The SOURCE will be following some of the innovations to come out of these workforce training programs.