Aged care innovative pool evaluation

The Aged Care Innovative Pool, established in 2001-02, is a national pool of flexible care places available for allocation to innovative services outside of the Aged Care Approvals Round (550 places in 2002-03). The Innovative Pool allows the Australian Government, in partnership with other stakeholders, to allocate places to services that will:

• provide aged care services in new ways;
• provide aged care services to client groups for whom current services are limited or to newly-emerging client groups; and
• provide aged care via new models of partnership and collaboration.

The Innovative Pool is designed to test new approaches to providing aged care, not to provide on-going aged care services. Pilot projects approved under the Innovative Pool typically have clear client eligibility criteria, controlled methods of service delivery and are time-limited. Evaluation is an integral element of all projects involving alternative service models.

There are two streams of pilot projects involved in the AIHW evaluation:

• Dementia Care - projects designed to address the need for the provision of appropriate high-level care to people with dementia in flexible and innovative ways.
• Disability/Aged Care Interface - projects to meet the needs of people with disabilities who are at risk of being admitted to residential aged care because their increasing care needs cannot be met through disability support systems alone.

For more information visit the Department of Health and Ageing's Aged Care Innovative Pool website.

Evaluation documents

• Evaluation data dictionary (625KB DOC)
• Client Information and Consent brochure (60KB PDF)
• Client Profile and Assessment Form (130KB PDF)
• Client Services Supplement (811KB DOC)
  Note: This is the same is the same document as the Appendix 3 Services supplement on the Guidelines web page.
• Evaluation database template (73KB XLS)
• Community care experience questionnaire (dementia services) (PDF 240KB)
• Community care experience questionnaire (disability/aged care interface services) (219KB PDF)
• Ethics Committee Approval - Innovative pool (Word doc 957KB) and dementia pilot projects (1.2MB DOC)
• Client follow up form (Dementia pilot clients only) (106KB DOC)

The following instruments are distributed to projects participating in the evaluation as part of the care manager evaluation pack. They are not available from the website because of copyright restrictions:

• Client Participation in Life Areas
• Client Satisfaction with Participation in Life Areas
• Mini-Mental State Examination
• Modified Barthel Index
• Older Americans Resources and Services (OARS) IADL scale (7 items from the Mutidimensional Functional Assessment Questionnaire)
• Behaviour Scale
• Caregiver Strain Index
• General Health Questionnaire ­ (28-item version)

Additional copies are available to projects on request.