the Aged Care Today magazine featured articles

While our bootcamps won’t prepare you for service or a marathon, they will deliver a jam-packed learning experience, with detailed subject knowledge, frameworks, practical strategies and tools that can be applied straight away.

Over the past two years, the Aged & Community Care Providers Association (ACCPA) has delivered diverse professional development opportunities to our members and the wider aged care services industry.

Through our learning and professional development initiatives, we are supporting attraction, recruitment and retention strategies and raising awareness of the diverse pathways available for sustainable employment.

Many thousands have engaged in our professional development events, programs and leadership training, bringing fresh resolve and innovative solutions to challenges.

Not just set-and-forget, we are committed to leading bravely and tapping into areas of key need in the industry.

Our professional development calendar is constantly evolving in response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and the Australian Government’s reform agenda, as well as what aged care providers tell us they need.

We have pivoted quickly to offer new content in new ways – including online, on-demand and customised exclusive delivery – and our new bootcamp delivery option means aged care staff
can receive comprehensive training in a fraction of the usual time.

Providers said they wanted a choice that delivered intensive learning quickly for their staff – so we listened. Using specific instructional design, our bootcamps offer accessible, bite size 30-minute training sessions, with participants walking away with new insights as well as resources and a tip sheet.

The weekly online sessions build on one another progressively over a four-week period, making learning easy to integrate with day-to-day work.

With opportunities to share ideas and solutions, participants can also learn from their peers in the industry.

To date, we have developed three different bootcamps: ‘Leadership’, ‘Workforce Retention’ and ‘Conversations’.

In November 2023 we delivered our first Leadership and Workforce Retention bootcamps for Victorian and Tasmanian home care providers under the Australian Government Home Care Workforce Support Program and a Conversation bootcamp for national providers of the Commonwealth Home Support Program.

Sharon Richards, Team Leader at Southern Cross Care (Tasmania) said the leadership bootcamp was well worth it.

“Sometimes training sessions can go on and on and then you lose everything that you learned at the beginning, you can’t retain it all. I certainly learned things, the content was interesting, and I picked up a few things that have helped me as a leader,” she said.

Now with upcoming reform in home care, we are offering two new bootcamps – ‘Frontline Home Care Workers’ and ‘Home Care Managers’ – as part of our ‘Leading the Way in Home Care’ suite of professional development products.

We are also working on bringing our ‘No Need to Wing It’ bootcamp to market, which is designed to equip aged care staff with the confidence and skills to deliver clear, concise, meaningful and relevant information – ideal for people whose roles require them to share key messages, drive cultural change and present innovative business solutions.

Our own Mandi Ackerman, Quality and Governance Program Lead at ACCPA, has participated in No Need to Wing It and says it helped her in her work.

“Regular, bite-sized sessions helped progressively build on the new concepts as revisiting the topic each week allowed my brain to keep engaging in the learning,” said Mandi. “I really liked the opportunity to share ideas and learn from the experiences of my colleagues so the times where we shared ideas and solutions was a standout.

“There were certainly some learnings which have impacted the way I design training and present information.”

Instructional designer and facilitator Maria-Jane Satterthwaite says the No Need to Wing It bootcamp is an action learning experience that builds confidence to present information and strategies to a range of audiences.

“If you are aware how adults learn you can craft your message and stand out from the pack, many great ideas have failed in the execution of telling others,” she said.

ACCPA’s bootcamps also serve as a ‘taster’ to other workshops and programs, such as the ACCPA Leadership Accelerator Program, which provide a deeper dive into key topics.

In preparation for the upcoming ACCPA National Conference 23-25 October 2024, we are offering a 20 per cent discount on Leading the Way in Home Care professional development products – so get in touch to find out more.