Self-assessment
What is self-assessment?
Self-assessment is an internal process whereby a residential aged care home looks at how it does things and what it achieves. During the process strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement are identified. This ensures resident care and services are always provided at the highest possible standard.
The process helps the residential aged care home:
- gain an up-to-date picture of its achievements
- identify any gaps or opportunities for improvement
- plan to address the gaps.
What is the relationship to continuous improvement?
Self-assessment can drive continuous improvement in the residential aged care home because it helps to:
- pause and think about the way the residential aged care home works and what results are being achieved for the benefit of residents
- identify the things the residential aged care home is doing well
- identify areas where the residential aged care home can perform exceptionally
- identify areas not performing well enough for residents
- identify areas not performing as well as the residential aged care home would like
- identify the activities to be incorporated into an improvement plan.
Self-assessment also enables the residential aged care home to:
- provide feedback about the residential aged care home to residents, representatives, staff and other stakeholders
- deepen understanding of improvement principles
- better understand how the residential aged care home functions and performs for the benefit of residents
- gain experience in applying assessment and improvement tools
- develop and strengthen a sense of shared goals
- contribute to ongoing improvements for residents.
More information on continuous improvement.
How should self-assessment be conducted?
Self-assessment can be carried out in many ways. The approved provider and management of the residential aged care home must decide what process is best for them. Involving the staff who undertake the process being assessed is often a valuable way of learning what is really done in the residential aged care home.
Residents, their representatives or relatives, visiting health professionals and other stakeholders should also contribute and learn about the residential aged care home’s assessment processes, and how the residential aged care home is run.
Regular self-assessment ensures up-to-date information about performance is available. The results of self-assessment can be used to plan improvement activities, and in turn the results of these activities can be evaluated and fed into the next self-assessment. So the process continues.
Importantly, self-assessment is an opportunity for the residential aged care home to check:
- compliance with each of the 44 expected outcomes
- what residents are gaining from the care and services provided
- if what is intended to happen actually happens (such as whether policies and procedures are followed)
- if the effectiveness of past improvements has been evaluated
- if newly identified improvements are planned and can be managed and implemented.
How can the Agency’s self-assessment tool be used?
As part of an application for accreditation, an approved provider, on behalf of a residential aged care home, is required to provide a report on the residential aged care home’s performance against the Accreditation Standards. We require this report to be completed using our self-assessment tool.
However, it is also a good idea to use this tool as a living document. This ensures:
- the residential aged care home is measuring its compliance against the Accreditation Standards and seeking improvements for the benefit of residents
- a structured approach to self-assessment is being undertaken
- results between self-assessments can be compared to measure progress
- gaps are identified before we visit
- the submission of the self-assessment is a simple process, without intensive work being conducted over a short period.
Please be aware that providing false or misleading information is an offence under the Criminal Codes Act 1995.
Where can I get more information?
We have produced a self-directed learning package which can be downloaded free of charge.
