Co-Designing a World-Class, Professional Learning Culture and Training Service for the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission

The Royal Commission highlighted an Aged Care sector experiencing overburdensome regulation, yet ineffectively addressing risk. There is a moral imperative to propel regulation of the sector into its next phase of maturity and improve the Quality Assessor (QA) workforce’s capacity to execute newly mandated regulatory functions. ACQSC identified a need for a purpose-driven learning environment and onboarding/pre-registration training service that accommodates the diverse needs of learners, training facilitators and regulatory team managers. This transformation demanded a new growth mindset across the organisation, sophisticated articulation of career pathways and skillsets, and a modern training toolset tailored to an evolving workforce context.

Through fast-paced, iterative, and deeply collaborative design we produced a cutting-edge training service encompassing: 1.Workforce capability profiles to inform transition towards a more advanced, high-performance regulator workforce. 2.QA onboarding training program with bespoke curriculum map, diversified learning content, and dynamic formative and summative assessment practices. 3.L&D facilitator capability uplift through specialised training and incorporation of comprehensive coaching and mentoring initiatives. These services cater to diverse learner needs by integrating mixed modal delivery methods and hybrid learning platforms, anchored within a robust pedagogical framework. This encourages innovative engagement, enhances learner experience, and provides flexibility for differentiated improvement pathways.

This initiative has fundamentally reshaped the ACQSC’s learning landscape. Commercially, it’s enhanced retention rates and accelerated onboarding for recruits, ensuring they’re adequately prepared to assume roles as QAs. A significant shift is the focus on collaborative coaching, increasing capacity-building efforts and triggering cultural change in management’s perception of and engagement in learning. Central to the impact is the identification and cultivation of talent suitable for regulatory roles. Ultimately, this service transcends mere commercial success; it embodies a broader societal imperative, ensuring QAs are equipped with the requisite knowledge and primed to enact regulatory measures essential for safeguarding vulnerable, elderly Australians.

This training service is a strategically designed and interconnected set of programs, tools and guides, and expertly crafted content that build a learner’s depth of understanding. Shifting from a content-driven learning journey to a stronger outcomes approach, our design focuses on cognitive and emotive development. Through expert facilitation and learner-centric training curricula, these services support the ACQSC in developing a high-performance culture focused on improvement, innovation and change that ensures the quality of their training and development services are world class. Our multi-phased project, summarised in the attachment, included: 1.Initial research and evaluation to understand the organisational context and Quality Assessor workforce developmental requirements. 2.Co-design of a learner-centric curriculum map for the ACQSC’s onboarding training service – Quality Assessor Training Program (QATP). 3.Applied adult learning techniques and service design/HCD methodology to ideate, prototype, test and refine content and assessments for: •The 4-week QATP inclusive of facilitator guides, enhanced risk-based regulation theory, and bespoke audit simulation activity for the new homecare-services learning stream. •An advanced career ‘clinical regulation’ training to establish practical skills for understanding and applying regulation appropriately in clinical care contexts. •A professional facilitation program that expertly aligns practices between L&D facilitators and Subject Matter Experts.