A longstanding challenge in aged care is the lack of suitable professional development training programs tailored towards comprehensively meeting the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Appropriate training is crucial to developing and sustaining a culturally safe workforce within a growing sector.

This project addresses the identified training needs of a South Australian Aboriginal community-controlled aged care organisation and aimed to co-design, pilot and evaluate a training program for the workforce that centres the health, wellbeing and cultural needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The mixed-methods project included a training needs assessment survey, piloting workshops and evaluation interviews with aged care staff employed across metropolitan, regional and remote South Australia to develop the training program.

This presentation will include findings from each stage of the project. The training needs assessment survey was completed by 82 respondents across 26 aged care providers. Enablers and barriers to participating in training, preferred delivery modes, and training topics were identified. The piloting workshops and evaluation interviews were undertaken to review the training program modules including the relevance and appropriateness of content and considerations of scalability throughout diverse aged care settings.

In this research we have developed a training program, co-designed in collaboration with organisational leadership and workforce representing direct care workers and care coordinators, that centres the health, wellbeing and cultural needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.