Messaging must improve to promote allied health’s value in aged care

Introducing an allied health staffing indicator in 2025 could spell good news for allied health in aged care as the specialty looks to next year as a major turning point for recognition and empowerment. 

The new staffing indicators will recognise the crucial role staff play in providing high-quality care, however, it will require key investments to elevate allied health further. 

AgeFIT Principal Consultant Tim Henwood believes a broken healthcare system is partly responsible for holding allied health back despite an abundance of supporting evidence promoting its impact.

He told Hello Leaders that the awareness is there but messaging around allied health has to be better. 

“The government’s done a great job putting funding on the table to support people to get involved. Government and aged care providers are aware that allied health works. They just don’t know how to implement it,” Mr Henwood said. 

“I just don’t think the individual knows where to go or what to access. There are great home care programs that will fund somebody to get into an allied health and exercise pathway but the client doesn’t know and their care providers or GPs don’t know enough to guide them down that path. People are lost in the system when the opportunity is staring them right in the face.

“The government’s done the right thing but the messaging is bad. Aged care providers don’t understand it. They don’t value it and don’t see they can turn it into a sustainable model of care.”

Before returning to independent consultancy in 2024, Mr Henwood worked with aged care provider Southern Cross Care (SA, NT & VIC) as Group Manager, Health & Wellness. He joined the organisation after departing academia because he wanted to influence healthy ageing directly. 

He expressed gratitude for Southern Cross Care after they gave him a ‘golden ticket’ to expand its allied health and wellness offerings. 

“I always say there was nothing I did at Southern Cross Care that wasn’t already in the public space. I just brought it all together into an evidence-based, sustainable model of care the client base embraced and the organisation backed and could see the value of,” he said. 

“We went from about 600 clients in 2017 to over 3,500 coming regularly across six allied health and therapy centres. We had about 140 staff working across those programs.”

After helping the organisation achieve significant growth, Mr Henwood hopes his consultancy work will enable other organisations to follow suit and create positive change.

He believes this is essential with the generational shift flowing through aged care.

Baby boomers inspire change

One of the greatest challenges allied health has faced in the past comes from within and that is convincing older people of its value.

Mr Henwood said the quiet generation has typically been less receptive to physical exercise and often followed instructions with little enthusiasm. This results in limited progress as providers and older people maintain the status quo.

“It breaks my heart when I see people advertising their fitness or their health and wellness services and someone has 0.5 kg dumbbells. They weigh less than a carton of milk. You have to embrace the evidence and ask people to push themselves. When you do the results are phenomenal. There are so many opportunities to reable people,” Mr Henwood said.

“Some of it’s a hard sell, some of it’s an easy sell. But enough people see a better future and are willing to engage with allied health pathways. There are so many avenues out there. It can be walking groups, tai chi or at a local gym. There are so many different ways to underpin positive healthy ageing.”

Baby boomers will be at the centre of this change. Already, the tide is turning and allied health is embraced in pockets of aged care, but as savvy baby boomers start accessing services they will already bring their own passion for exercise and wellness.

Providers will still need to work on encouraging residents to participate. This includes showcasing how physical activity relates to everyday activities and their social and mental well-being. 

Meanwhile, as he highlighted earlier to Hello Leaders, education and awareness campaigns from governments and key stakeholders must take place. 

“I’d love to see government messaging in the same way the government messaged about smoking or HIV. We need a greater level of awareness in our older age groups about how they can reverse their decline, address their health issues and how they can curtail their need to go to the hospital. There is an opportunity for messaging out there,” he added.

“We need better education for our carers, caregivers, consumers and providers about how people can get involved in health and wellness – not necessarily just allied health.”

The role of regulation

The new allied health staffing quality indicator inherently will play a role in promoting allied health’s value. But regulation itself won’t fix the problem of neglected reablement approaches. 

Mr Henwood is afraid providers will avoid delivering allied health if residents decline the service when it’s offered to them despite the need.

“There is a big tick box out for the aged care provider that says reablement needs to be offered if the client chooses to take it. So they can tick offered but declined. We need move past that and jump to offered, supported, embedded and change happened,” he explained. 

“It can occur the same way we do an action incident outcome. Every time we have an incident in the aged care space, we need to find out what that incident was and follow it up to make sure it doesn’t happen again. 

“If we don’t do it, we’ll continue to have falls, disability, low mobility and functional decline that impacts things like social engagement or mental health disorders. We need to be more proactive.”

There is growing optimism in the sector that by recognising allied health in quality indicators it will be directly funded and promoted across residential and home care settings. Aged care leaders must also embrace allied health and recognise how it can benefit older people and all areas of the organisation. 

“We’re seeing different trends which will hopefully underpin greater involvement. That means there’s an opportunity for aged care providers to set up health and wellness centres or allied health practices which can lead to sustainable business models,” Mr Henwood added.

“Working with Southern Cross Care taught me if you have a good allied health therapy front door that flows through to your client base for the rest of the organisation.”