Many older Australians, especially those who experience socioeconomic disadvantage or come from diverse backgrounds, find the aged care system complex and difficult to access. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended establishing a workforce of care finders to help older people and their families navigate the aged care system.

The care finder program was announced in the 2021–22 Budget as part of the Connecting Senior Australians to Aged Care Services measure. It is designed to provide intensive face-to-face support for older Australians who might otherwise “fall through the cracks” and help them to access aged care and health services, along with social supports. Primary Health Networks (PHNs) are responsible for commissioning care finder organisations to deliver services based on identified local needs.

The department engaged AHA to evaluate the care finder program. Our evaluation is explored:

• the implementation, appropriateness and effectiveness of the program
• stakeholders’ views on and experiences with care finder services
• opportunities to improve the design or delivery of care finder services in the future.

We evaluated these aspects through 3 parallel streams of work.

In the first stream, we interviewed care finders, older people and their families who access care finder services, and a range of stakeholders with a role in referring older people and their families to the care finder program.

In the second stream, we are created a bespoke online data management platform to allow care finder organisations to submit activity and customer feedback data. Data submitted on this platform not only informed our evaluation but was also available to participating organisations as an interactive dashboard to support their own performance monitoring and continuous improvement initiatives.

In the third stream, we reviewed relevant program documentation from the department and PHNs to learn more about the planned models of commissioning and service delivery. We also reviewed My Aged Care and National Screening and Assessment Form data to improve understanding of clients’ circumstances, contexts and needs in relation to the program.

Our final report includes evaluation findings and recommendations for improvements to the program and can be found on the department’s website.