About the Essentials
The NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI) Intellectual Disability Health Network has undertaken a substantial body of work, in extensive consultation with colleagues across the state, to produce this website. Consumer and carer partnership has been a key feature of the process.
The Essentials provides guidance to local health services seeking to meet their commitment to improve and enhance services to people with intellectual disability in their population.
It describes the challenges of the current status, the case for change and the 10 principles of quality service delivery for people with intellectual disability.
The self-assessment process delivers immediately relevant and useful guidance.
The summary shows the interrelation of these aspects of the Essentials.
Areas for action
Areas for action are categorised across four enabling domains (workforce, communication, data and system) and five health service delivery domains (mental health, hospitalisation, integration within health services, integration with external services and specialised health services). This approach creates a total of nine categories for action, with guidance for prioritisation within each category and tools for self-assessment.
Some of these suggested actions specifically relate to improving health outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with intellectual disability.
It can be adapted for use by any state and local health service.
The consultation process has prioritised the actions for implementation. The ‘key (high priority) actions’ are followed by a self-assessment tool and relevant links to resources.
Patient experience
The experiences of people with an intellectual disability were aligned with the four enabling domains. These experiences align with and reflect the goal that people with intellectual disability will receive health services which meet their full range of healthcare needs and expectations. Consider the patient experience case studies.
Context
The website aligns with national health care strategies:
- National Disability Strategy 2021-2031
- National Disability Insurance Scheme
- National Roadmap for Improving the Health of People with Intellectual Disability
- Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability
In this context there is recognition of the continuing importance of health services in the multiagency matrix of integrated care for this population, across the whole age spectrum. Appropriate and equitable access to mainstream health services is a key commitment of health departments across Australia. In some states, like NSW, the system is further supported by a range of specialised hubs of healthcare expertise as points of tertiary referral, advice and escalation.
Feedback on the Essentials
Since the Essentials was launched in 2017, the ACI has sought feedback on how it has been implemented. This has led to the 2024 revisions to make it more immediately useful for all Australian states and territories.
Implementation tips
This list of comments comes from the feedback we have received.
- We used the whole self–assessment tool initially, but then decided to just focus on workforce.
- We found there were too many actions to respond to, so we just tackled the high priority actions in every domain. Then we felt we were making progress when we could answer yes to a high priority action.
- We were tasked with asking every department to do the self-assessment! It was a lot of work but helped us have somewhere to start having conversations across our district.
- We printed off all the actions on a word document, so it was easier to work through.
- We asked each member of our small team to rate our work on the ‘hospitalisation’ domain as an experiment. We had a good discussion.
- We ended up taking out the actions which were more aimed at a system or statewide level, like data. Otherwise we found people were getting stuck on questions over which they had no control.
- We linked some actions to our own resources.
- I don’t know how it would have worked if we didn’t have the great executive sponsor driving the self-assessment at a high level for us.
- We are using The Essentials to help us prepare for accreditation. It gives us some ideas on what we can do. We are not a health organisation, but we used The Essentials for ideas and resources for quality improvement.
Acknowledgements
The co-chairs of the Intellectual Disability Health Network thank the Network’s executive group members for their contribution in shaping the final outcome of this work.
The ideas and actions for capability building were gathered through an extensive consultative process across health services and the broader membership of the Network. Consumer and carer partnership has been a key feature of the process.
Many of the tools to support the suggested actions are the direct result of the commitment of the Network’s membership to improve the experience of people with intellectual disability as they access the services of NSW Health. These tools help to improve health outcomes.