About the Forum
The HACC National Forum aims to bring key stakeholders together from amongst academics and researchers, service providers, peak bodies and governments to explore the evidence base and implications for more thoroughly adopting a wellness, capacity building and restorative care approach to HACC service provision. The HACC National Forum will have a strong policy focus and aim to promote debate. The Forum will take a wide view across the community care suite of services and aim to challenge policy makers and leading service providers to rethink the assumptions underlying service provision for the aged. This is an opportunity to explore the issues in a considered and detailed manner, starting with canvassing the evidence and then considering its implications for the way community based services respond to people with disabilities, particularly older people.

Attendance at the Forum will be by invitation only at a cost of $500 per delegate. A list of delegates is being developed by all jurisdictions. The outcomes of the Forum will be made available through printed copy and downloadable audio files following the event. There will also be a report back at the ACSA Conference in May 2008. The Victorian Department of Human Services (DHS) is organising and hosting the National Home and Community Care (HACC) Forum on behalf of the Commonwealth Government and other States and Territories.

Forum Aim
To bring key stakeholders together from amongst academics, researchers, service providers and government to explore the evidence base and implications for more thoroughly adopting a wellness, capacity building and restorative care approach to HACC service provision, and to test whether a consensus can be developed about future directions and next steps.

Forum Objectives

• To explore the evidence on recent advances in understanding the ageing process, including the impact of increased longevity and the potential for functional improvement.
• To explore the evidence on wellness, capacity building and restorative care approaches, with a focus on community care
• To share information on models that have taken these approaches, both nationally and internationally, and the learnings from these.
• To provide an opportunity for stakeholders to come together at a national level from across academics and researchers, governments and service providers to gain a common baseline understanding of the evidence and discuss the implications for HACC service delivery.
• To broadly consider implementation implications for better incorporating wellness, capacity building and restorative care approaches into HACC services.
• To begin exploring a research and transformative agenda to support the implementation of this type of approach.

• Longevity and Societal Expectations: providing the new picture of ageing, the older person's and community’s expectations, and a critical reflection on the current range of HACC services.
• Dependency and Wellness: exploring the disablement process, creation of dependency and why we might need another workable model that will enhance wellbeing
• Learnings from other examples: exploration of other key examples and models that can provide inspiration and transferable learnings
• Building the Research Agenda: exploring how the researchers, government and service providers can work together to develop a research agenda to inform, guide and evaluate the implementation of a new model.
• Building the transformative and translational agenda: exploring how we can translate innovation and research into sustainable practice with the identification of key pathways and steps.

• The evidence base on the nature of ageing has significantly developed our understanding of older people’s needs and capacities. It is time to review HACC services to see what potential there is to better address these needs.
• The issue of increased longevity will demand a new approach in HACC service delivery in the future.
• There is concern that the present HACC paradigm of service delivery assumes dependence or constant decline, with services substituting for client’s own efforts to look after themselves rather than improving their capacity to do things for themselves. There seems to be potential to explore approaches which better retain or improve clients’ independence and self-efficacy thereby minimizing the impact of functional decline on the person’s capacity to live at home and participate in everyday social interactions.
• The HACC target group includes frail older people and younger people with disabilities. The focus of this Forum is primarily on older people to provide an opportunity to reflect whether we need to better align HACC services with the evidence base. Disability services have a history of operating from independence promoting and self-efficacy perspectives. This is not necessarily translated directly into HACC services which tend to operate more from an ‘older person’ focused paradigm.
• The Forum is only a starting point. It needs to be seen in context of testing consensus building about objectives, goals and next steps.
• This approach is not seen as the panacea for all community care issues but seems to offer some useful potential for HACC services.
• Different stakeholders will bring different levels of knowledge and interest to these approaches. The Forum is an opportunity to bring participants to the same base level understanding to begin to form a judgment on the usefulness and applicability of these approaches to HACC services.
• A number of States have shown interest in incorporating this approach (Victoria and Western Australia). The Forum provides an opportunity to explore the scope for a national approach.

• Researchers;
• Academics;
• Health professionals;
• Major service providers and peak organisations; and,
• Policy development officers and managers from state, territory and federal governments.