Last week saw the anticipated release of the The Aged Care Roadmap, setting out the future of aged care and reform directions. It represents the Aged Care Sector Committees views on what is needed to achieve a sustainable, consumer driven and market based system.
I am sure that those of you who have had time to digest the report will agree, the Roadmap doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know or expect. The destination is inevitable; a single aged care and support system that is market based and consumer driven.
But how do we reach that destination? Well that is still to be decided.
We are just at the start of an exciting journey, one that all organisations who want to be successful have to take. As with any journey, there will be those that make it and those that don’t. Those that get there quickly and those that take wrong turns. What is for sure, we will all discover new things along the way.
However much we may have hoped for all the answers, the Roadmap was never going to be a GPS. No one single body can calculate the route and give turn by turn directions.
To succeed we will need to work together to interpret the map, plot the route, and develop the tools to support us along the way. After all you wouldn’t climb a mountain without a guide or go orienteering without a compass would you?
Over the coming months we will share our thinking, knowledge and experience through a series of blogs and case studies linked to the future direction of aged care.
This month we begin, as all great journeys should, with research. Kellie shares her insights on the importance of research and role of the ‘research as engagement’ model.
