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Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care Initiative

Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care (EBPAC)

The EBPAC initiative aims to encourage and support the uptake of evidence-based, person-centred, better practice in Australian Government subsidised aged care services, through a focus on improving staff knowledge and skills and developing supporting resources, to improve outcomes for aged care recipients.

While a number of evidence-based guidelines exist to assist aged care staff in providing appropriate care for residents and people in the community, it is recognised that there is a need to establish strategies to translate the evidence into everyday practice. This could include training programs, improved communication procedures, assessment tools or management policies and protocols.

The EBPAC program commenced in 2007, and projects were required to identify and implement evidence-based practice that improved clinical and personal care in residential aged care. In 2010, the scope of the program was expanded to include community aged care and resulted in the name of the program changing from the “Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care” (EBPRAC) initiative to “Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care” (EBPAC) program. More recently, as part of the 2011-2012 Budget, the EBPAC initiative was incorporated into the Aged Care Services Improvement and Healthy Ageing Grants Fund.

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Aged Care Service Improvement and Healthy Ageing Grants Fund - Invitation to apply for funding

Open Competitive Grants Funding Round 2 - DoHA/116/1213

Funding is being provided to further the objectives of the Aged Care Service Improvement and Healthy Ageing Grants Fund, including measures introduced by the Living Longer Living Better aged care reform package announced on 20 April 2012.

Further information regarding funding for projects to support the Quality Use of Medicines is available on the DoHA ITA information page, under the EBPAC website.

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Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care

There are three elements to evidence-translation activities under the EBPAC initiative:

1. EBPAC Evidence Translation Projects

The core element of EBPAC provides grants to the industry to implement evidence-translation projects. To date, there have been three EBPAC funding rounds. The first two funding rounds involved 13 projects working within residential aged care facilities across six states.

Under EBPAC Round three, evidence-translation projects have been funded in the following areas:

• Clinical Leadership (2 projects);
• Community Aged Care Evidence Translation (6 projects) – areas of focus are oral health, wound management, social engagement and physical activity, emotional wellbeing and person-centred dementia support; and
• Residential Aged Care Evidence Translation (1 project) – focusing on a model of sustainable culture change in residential aged care.

2. EBPAC National Rollout Projects

EBPAC national rollout projects build on the successes of the previous EBPAC projects by rolling out the results more widely across the aged care sector. Under Round One of the Aged Care Service Improvement and Healthy Ageing Grants Fund, two projects have been funded in the areas of palliative care and wound management.

3. EBPAC Resource Management

Resource dissemination is an important activity in the promotion of evidence-based practice in aged care. The initiative continues to support resource management activities that focus on disseminating and maintaining the currency of practical evidence based resources and tools for the aged care sector.

EBPAC Evaluation

An evaluation will be undertaken by the Centre for Health Service Development (CHSD), a Centre within the Australian Health Services Research Institute, University of Wollongong.

The three year national evaluation (2012-15) will evaluate the community /residential evidence-translation projects and the national rollout projects. The overall aim of the evaluation is to support the project and program implementation and facilitate an understanding of what has been achieved. The evaluation will assess the outcomes of the projects funded under the EBPAC initiative and identify critical success factors to inform future national rollout or wider promulgation of evidence-based materials/resources from successful projects.

Previously, CHSD undertook a four year (2007-2011) evaluation of Round 1 and Round 2 of the EBPRAC program. The Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care Program Final Evaluation Report (National Evaluation Report) provides information on the outcome of the 13 projects, highlights enablers and barriers to the uptake of evidence-based practice in residential aged care, and makes a number of recommendations regarding future activities to support sector wide improvements in this area.

This report is available in HTML format:
Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care Program Final Evaluation Report

You may download this document in PDF format:
PDF printable version of the Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care Program Final Evaluation Report (PDF 798 KB)
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