Let's collaborate

The Caring Futures Institute will be different in its focus and approach by acknowledging that the future we seeks already sits in the imagination and the lived experience of the ‘real world’. By combining discovery research with a strong focus on knowledge translation and co-design methods ‘real life’ will lead our research to deliver better care and health outcomes that are embedded in policy, practice and systems.  

By positioning the focus of the Caring Futures Institute on the themes of Better Lives, Better Communities, Better Care and Better Systems – supported by cross cutting themes of innovation, knowledge translation, technology and health economics – we are embedding interdisciplinary research into the Institute Structure. This innovative approach that puts care and caring at the forefront – regardless of life stage, disease context or discipline area – will see us build successful transdisciplinary teams to tackle complex care and caring challenges.

Read Judith's speech here.

Judith’s ‘c’ words are what connects the science of care to the art of care and make it humane and restorative. Compassion, collaboration, co-operation, communication, creativity, credibility, challenge and choice are just some of the necessary ‘c’ words in our Caring Futures Institute.

The Caring Futures Institute specialises in the development and application of health economics methods for quantifying benefits through the measurement and valuation of health, quality of life and wellbeing. The Institute currently has work underway with internationally renowned expert Professor Julie Ratcliffe, in a range of areas including aged care and disability care sectors to quantify the economic benefits of high quality care.

Researchers in our health and social care economics cross-cutting theme of the CFI are actively engaged in moving away from traditional cost benefit analysis and the development of new methods including social return on investment and cost consequence analyses that quantify the benefits of care in terms of its impact for the health, quality of life and wellbeing of patients and consumers.

The traditional boundaries around health and social care are breaking down and integrated care is becoming ever more important. This is the case especially for aged care where we increasingly see services that have traditionally been provided by the health system being provided by aged care providers. There is certainly a need for more health economists to specialise in social care and it is a central tenant of the CFI to increase capability and capacity in this area.  

Integrated and well-coordinated care through cross-sectoral collaboration is the goal of health and social care service delivery. There are no quick solutions to achieve this goal. Our plan is to work with stakeholders to generate or apply research evidence to foster cross-sectoral collaboration to strengthen health and social care systems.

We believe that system changes comes from well-informed and activated stakeholders in the system. Our ‘Better Systems’ theme team is capable of being part of changing process using various research methodologies to contribute new evidence to support integrated systems changes, including participatory action research.

As the Institute launches, we are opening conversations about this. There are many ways that people might want to shape our research, and a lot for us to learn. Among other things, we are spending some time in the early stages of the Institute working with people who might use our research developing a framework for collaboration and coproduction. We will share this on the website. People will be able to see some of the ways they can be involved.

We hope that our combined focus on building relationships and online information sharing will help to spread information widely. We aim to spread information by developing clear and freely available information in accessible formats, and promoting this to key networks and change-makers. Our own project teams also work directly with a wide range of people living in diverse circumstances, including in remote and socially isolated situations.  

We will have a strong emphasis on knowledge exchange, and promoting the results of our research in ways that are inviting to a range of people – such as videos and short easy read summaries. Many of our projects can be tailored to respond to the needs of partners for regular information to support change processes.

Our focus will be on developing our collective capacity to build relationships from the project design stage onwards, through all stages of projects. By involving people early and often, we will embed opportunities for influence, knowledge generation and promoting change.

The Caring Futures Institute is the research arm of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University. So, first we will make sure our innovations make their way to our teaching programs. Second, through our knowledge translation theme, we will actively make sure the new innovations get to the people who need to know about and use the new knowledge and third, by working in a collaborative, co-design way your innovations will be ‘owned’ by more carers from the start.

We do this by ‘de-mystifying’ research and we do that by getting everyone involved in some sort of problem solving, quality improvement or knowledge translation activity. We also invest in joint appointments between the Caring Futures Institute and clinical services.

It is about the culture and about making it the norm that everyone knows about using the best evidence in their practice and that they check out whether what they’re doing has had the desired effect. This is everybody’s business.

You tell stories about the impact the research has had on real peoples’ lives. And you also understand that you do have to speak to multiple audiences – so there will be the scientific community who will need to be convinced of the quality of your findings and then there’s people who are going to use your work.

At Flinders one of the things we want all our graduates to have or be able to do, is to be innovative problem solvers and people who ‘think outside the box’. You can’t do that unless you have a strong grounding in what evidence is and how to solve problems and ask (research) questions.

We identify people who are passionate about issues and who want to work together on projects. And yes, these champions will keep the momentum going.

All research undertaken in the Caring Futures Institute will have a policy and practice strategy attached to it. That will mean the work we do will make its way into government and organisational policies and practice.

The Caring Futures Institute will be using a number of strategies to ensure that research is used. Partnerships are critical in ensuring our research is meaningful and they are also critical in ensuring innovations are implemented. We are building community, industry, professional and policy partnerships to facilitate transition into practice. We will also be adopting a whole of research cycle which identifies the potential pathways for the findings at planning. The cross cutting themes will also be core to use as implementation science, health economics and digital health provide sophisticated avenues and opportunities for  mainstream utilisation.

Finally, we will also be using this stream to investigate the theory and practice that support the successful integration and adoption of innovation.

We are starting with a study of research engagement and impact in the caring ecosystem. This work will inform the processes we implement.

We are also developing a communication strategy and framework. We will be using traditional avenues such as publications, conferences, newsletters, policy presentations and media supports. This will be accompanied by a social media strategy to address the diversity of Australia’s population and an interactive online web presence to support dissemination of, and access to, our research findings. Finally, a strongly connected set of partnerships will provide a network for communication.

The Caring Futures Institute will be a thought leader and advocate for the role of prevention over cure. Our research will highlight the individual, social and economic value of investing in modern self-care initiatives tailored to modern living and systems.

Self-care has been defined as “the care taken by individuals towards their own health and well-being — including the care extended to the family and the community”. The definition is broad and encompasses the actions required for people to maintain good physical and mental health, to meet their social and psychological needs and prevent illness or accidents. It extends beyond traditional concepts of self-management, which focus specifically on learning techniques to manage a health condition.

The evidence for self-care interventions in chronic disease is very strong but the implementation of self-care strategies is not a priority funding area.

Self-care has become increasingly important to the health sector as it undergoes its most fundamental restructuring for many years. Health Care budgets are becoming more difficult to manage in light of the increasing health burden caused by long-term conditions, an ageing population and conditions related to lifestyle choices such as smoking. Prevention of disease and increasing efforts to educate and support patients in managing their own health should be prioritised by all healthcare systems.

To ensure the linkages between research and practice endure we need to work on a new clinical research culture…with leadership, education and funding.

To improve organisational commitment to evidence-based quality and care we need to train an army of healthcare professionals who have to ability to

1.  Involve patients to determine what “quality” means”
2. Ensure the clinical data being collected is high quality
3. Upskill all staff in data analytics or build in AI for analysis and quality reports.

And use budget incentives to reward quality practice.