Aged Care Access Initiative (ACAI)

To improve access for residents of Residential Aged Care Facilities to Speech Pathology services

The Division conducted a needs assessment in August 2008 to identify which allied health services should be funded, through a survey distributed to all RACFS in the Division. The Allied Health Professionals most requested were Speech Pathologists, Dieticians, and Dental Hygienists. The Division elected to pursue Speech Pathology, due to difficulty in recruiting Dental Hygienists and Dieticians to provide direct clinical services to residents in RACFS.

In collaboration with the Speech Pathology Department at Coffs Harbour Health Campus one Speech Pathologists is recruited to provide service outreach visits to RACFS across Coffs Harbour for one day a week, Bellingen and the Nambucca Valley for another day each week, and another Speech Pathologist recruited to provide outreach visits to RACFS in Grafton for one day a week.

The clinical priority identified as most significant for this service is the assessment and treatment of dysphagia (difficulty in swallowing), including those residents on a modified fluid diet that have not been reviewed for a while, those residents with PEGS (feeding tube directly into the stomach through the abdominal wall) who need swallow assessments, as well as other residents who need swallow assessments. Therefore, most of the work will be 1:1 with the resident, with each session lasting about 1 hour. The Speech Pathologists would also like to provide some inservice for staff of the RACFs so they can maintain programs in between therapy, recognize risks, and so on.