Safety and quality are key principles in the provision of Australian Government-funded aged care services.

The Aged Care Quality Standards were introduced on 1 July 2019. The Standards replaced four separate sets of standards and apply across all aged care settings, including residential care and home care. They cover eight key areas essential to the delivery of high-quality aged care. The Standards were developed over a four-year period and were co-designed by the Department, an Aged Care Standards Technical Advisory Group (TAG), and the broader aged care sector.

AHA’s expertise in evaluation, along with our past experience in developing aged care quality standards for the Victorian and Australian government, meant that we were ideally placed to conduct this evaluation. Through consultations with TAG members and other stakeholders, and a desktop review process, AHA assessed the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement of the process that was used to co-design and draft the Standards.

The evaluation represented the first stage of a broader three-phase evaluation of the Standards.