How Spark of Life Education Supports a Health Care Service to Excel in Meeting the new Strengthened Standards

By Jane Verity and Hilary Lee

The new Strengthened Aged Care Standards are designed to ensure that older individuals feel safe, are treated with kindness, dignity, and respect, have choices, and are encouraged to live their best quality of life.

 Spark of Life Education is uniquely positioned to help aged care services excel in meeting these elevated standards, through providing genuine Person-Centred Care.

 What is Authentic Person-Centred Care?

To truly understand authentic Person-Centred Care, it is necessary to consider these two key factors:

1. What Will Be Absent:
   • A care environment completely free of the 17 dehumanising behaviors of Malignant Social Psychology, as defined by Professor Tom Kitwood, who first developed person-centered care in dementia. These behaviors, driven by clinical routines and task-focused approaches, harm and undermine the well-being of older people and those with dementia.
   • People with dementia no longer wanting to go home at the end of the day. This behavior is a sign of psychosocial despair in response to an unsafe and distressing environment.

1. What Will Be the Experience:
   • Staff will be working from a heart-centered perspective, emotionally connected with their residents, clients, or patients. Their primary focus is to nurture and support each person through kind and respectful conversations and interactions. This quality of attitude and work practice prevents elder abuse and empowers older people to live safe and respected lives filled with choice, meaning, and purpose.

A Practical Solution to meet the new Strengthened Standards

Dementia Care International has developed education and a best practice Model of Care to enable a health care service to implement authentic Person-Centred Care. The education fundamentally shifts attitudes, and work practices and transforms the care experience for both staff and residents, clients or patients.

The outcome of the education provides a care environment where:

• Staff come together with a common purpose and method of care delivery, fostering cohesion and unity.
• Residents, clients, or patients are seen in a more humanized way, which positively impacts the quality of care in a significant and lasting way.
• Staff naturally provide care that meets the new strengthened standards, driven by a deep understanding of each person’s unique needs.
• Furthermore, the 4-day course on the Spark of Life Rehabilitative Program equips staff with the skills to facilitate rementia—the recovery of lost abilities such as cognitive abilities in people with dementia. This innovative approach aligns with the standards of re-ablement and transforming lives.

The Spark of Life Model of Care and Education focuses on the emotional wellbeing of individuals and are adaptable across all areas of care, not just the field of dementia. By creating a safe and inclusive environment, the new skills learned enable staff to meet the core emotional needs of people with dementia and individuals with disabilities.

Healthcare services that adopt this Model and Education are equipped to meet the core aspects of the new Strengthened Aged Care Standards, by ensuring that older people feel safe, are treated with kindness, dignity, and respect, have choices, and are encouraged to live their best quality of life.

For more information, we invite healthcare leaders to contact Dementia Care International at info@dementiacareinternational.com