Study highlights strengths of rural providers

Despite facing many challenges, rural community care providers have a lot going for them and there’s reason to be optimistic for their future, a study suggests.

Despite facing many challenges, rural community care providers have a lot going for them and there’s reason to be optimistic for their future, a study suggests.

Professor Suzanne Hodgkin

The study published in the Australian Journal of Public Administration looked at five community aged care providers in regional Victoria. 

It found despite workforce shortages, remote clientele, lack of funding and the challenges of providing consumer directed care in thin markets, rural providers are collaborative, committed and connected to their communities.

They’re also prepared to leverage their unique position to come up with innovative strategies to meet the care needs of their clients, lead research Suzanne Hodgkin says.

This depiction brightens the more usual portrayal of rural health services and their communities as disadvantaged and unable to withstand diminution of resources and increasing demand on services.

Suzanne Hodgkin

“This depiction brightens the more usual portrayal of rural health services and their communities as disadvantaged and unable to withstand diminution of resources and increasing demand on services,” Professor Hodgkin writes.

Isolated populations

The study surveyed managers and direct care staff from five not-for-profit service providers in north-eastern Victoria covering the local government areas of Indigo, Towong, Wodonga, and Alpine, a region including some of the most isolated populations in Victoria

Some care recipients lived up to 75 km from town centres and one woman initially selected a service provider located 300 km from where she lived .

Almost 1,950 people in the region were getting home care at the time of the study, including 1,789 on CHSP.

Professor Hodgkin, from the School of Allied Health from ACU, says it’s questionable whether the highly marketised model of home care is the best one for rural areas, where choice of service and providers can be lacking.

But she says the study showed that while choice was lacking, the providers knew their communities well and were prepared to work together.

“They don’t work in competition because they don’t they’ve got too much ground to cover,” she told Community Care Review.

“So they work together really well – one will provide a particular service that another doesn’t and they’re trying to match clients to the services as well as they can.”

Ageing workforce

Like many rural providers, the organisations in the study were relying on an ageing workforce, with an average age of 52, at a time of escalating demand for services.   

However they were acutely aware of the need to change existing workforce models and figure out solutions built based on flexibility and collaboration.

One such initiative was the use of older workers who had been the “backbone of the community aged care sector for years” as mentors.

“One organisatoin had the idea of a buddy system which gave younger people role models who have worked for years in the community,” Professor Hodgkin said.

Other potential solutions included increased collaboration with training institutions, development of skills-focused placement opportunities and drawing on the strength of rural services to respond to local needs and tap into local resources.

Question of funding

Speaking to Community Care Review before last week’s budget announcement of major home care funding, Professor Hodgkin said the study showed rural providers had the will and initiative to innovate but were being held up by lack of funding.

“It was heartening to really see these rural providers are not complaining,  they’re really looking for ways forward that they can better serve the older people they’re currently providing for,” she said.

“We believe they’ve got the capacity to innovate if they’ve got the funding. These are places that are quite isolated but they’re really thinking outside the box on ways to innovate.”

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Tags: rural-and-regional, suzanne-hodgkin,

1 thought on “Study highlights strengths of rural providers

  1. I find this in reality very different. The fact that the majority of those surveyed were CHSP clients means they were low on the care spectrum.
    Wodonga is part of a region of 90,000 people. Of course there are service providers. Try living 45 minutes from a larger town when you live in a rural town with a population of 2000. The answer is you always need to go into residential care. Not me!

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