Published: May 2025. Next review: 2030.
This toolkit helps staff working in multi-purpose services to deliver high-quality care, ensuring residents feel like they are at home rather than in a hospital.
Residents living in multi-purpose services are not patients; the facility is their home. However, multi-purpose services (MPS) also offer limited hospital services to local communities.
This creates a challenging dual role for staff who can find it difficult to provide lifestyle-based care for aged care residents while also delivering clinical care for inpatients, emergencies and community services.
This resource provides practical strategies to assist multi-purpose services to meet accreditation requirements. This is guided by 8 key principles of care and practical tools to support compliance and improve the quality of care for MPS residents.
The key principles of care
- Principle 1: Respect the resident as an individual
- Staff respect the resident as an individual with an emphasis on rights, quality of life and wellbeing.
- Principle 2: Residents are informed and involved
- Provide the resident, family and carer with timely, appropriate and ongoing information.
- Principle 3: Comprehensive assessment and care planning
- Involve the resident, family and carers in detailed care planning based on the resident's health, interests and daily needs.
- Principle 4: Homelike environment
- Create a homelike environment that enables freedom and choice in routines and activities.
- Principle 5: Recreational and leisure activities that support healthy ageing
- The resident is supported to maintain personal relationships and access recreational activities.
- Principle 6: Positive dining experience
- Serve varied, nutritious and appetising meals to provide positive dining experiences.
- Principle 7: Multidisciplinary services
- Multidisciplinary services provide person-centred care based on the resident’s needs, choice and availability.
- Principle 8: Staff have expertise in aged and person-centred care
- Staff are trained to be experts in aged and person-centred care.
Tools to support the principles
These tools will help you to identify what is being done well, what can be improved and how to best prioritise the next steps to enhance current practice. Include MPS management, staff, residents, family members and carers in these discussions to gather a range of views.