The Wellness 2 Age program is an evidence-based 10-week program that uses a person-centred dual tasking approach.
The program supports a focus on individual goals within a group-based setting, and uses strategies to support translation into a person’s home and community. To determine success in the program, we use a range of outcome measures that are completed on weeks 1 and 10 of the program.
Each weekly 60-minute session starts with a short 10-minute introduction, discussing specific and individualised strategies, followed by completion of two different activities of 20 minutes duration, that challenge both motor and cognitive abilities. The session closes with a 10 minute feedback and review discussion. Each of the activities have been specifically developed to simulate skills integral to daily functional tasks such as balance, mobility and strength, planning, problem solving, attention and memory.
How is the program delivered?
1. Ensure you have the correct staff to deliver the program
The Wellness 2 Age program can only be delivered by trained allied health care professionals, allied health assistants, and aged care staff in community-based service contexts who have completed the Wellness 2 Age training course and obtained the program certification. You must have obtained the Wellness 2 Age Facilitator Certification to deliver the program.
You might consider having at least two staff members certified in your organisation to allow for wider delivery or to cater for limitations in staff availability. The program can be delivered with just one facilitator, and an allied health assistant can run the activities, however at least one allied health professional or health professional is required to oversee the program delivery as they will be required to interpret the results of the outcome measures around the individual goals and assign the activities.
2. Complete the Wellness 2 Age Facilitator Training Program
The training consists of both self-directed online modules and a face-to-face workshop. Time spent on training may count towards continuing professional development (CPD) points. You will be awarded a certificate upon completion.
3. Obtain the equipment and resources
Equipment
Each of the program activities requires a range of equipment to deliver the program. This can comprise of freely everyday household items such as a washing basket, tennis balls, a wall, or empty plastic bottles; to items which need to be purchased such as basketballs, soccer balls, swiss balls, medicine balls, parallel bars, mini basketball hoops, and proprioceptive pads.
Most of the equipment required to run the program is comprised of everyday household items or items that are commonly owned by many allied health organisations. Otherwise, they can be easily obtained at a low cost.
A list of the equipment and low-cost purchasing options is provided in the Facilitators Portal located on the Program Training page. However, please get in touch with us if you have any questions.
Resources
Once you complete the training, you will have access to the Facilitators Portal where you can access the relevant resources containing the printable resources required for some of the activities, which you can laminate and reuse.
4. Deliver the sessions
Classes are designed to be delivered via a 10-week program that focuses on completing a range of targeted activities that are graded to support individual goals and are explicitly linked to home-based activities.
Class delivery
Wellness 2 Age is designed to be delivered to participants via one 1-hour session per week for 10 weeks.
Number of participants per class
Classes should ideally be comprised of between 6-12 participants per class depending on staffing ratios.
5. Contribute to the program’s ongoing evaluation
The program measures success by using a range of pre and post outcome measures that you can upload as de-identified data into the Wellness 2 Age online portal. Once uploaded onto the portal, you can then access all the data from your organisation, download reports of participant’s results, and provide certificates to each participate based on their individual outcomes.
What are the benefits for running Wellness 2 Age at your organisation or community-based facility?
Wellness 2 Age is an innovative program that focuses on proactive approaches to support older people in a strengths-based approach.
Wellness 2 Age can be offered within existing funding mechanisms for older people wanting to participate. This may enable no cost or low cost to the participants and a cost recovery model to your organisation.
Organisations can recover the cost of delivering the program by charging the participants for their participation in the program. Participants may be able to use a range of funding options to support their participation in the program.
The program can be offered as a complimentary service alongside other services that your organisation provides. This can be an attractive option for potential or existing clients of your organisation.
The program is specifically designed to measure pre and post outcomes measures for each participant. Analysis of the benefit of the program can then be provided as valuable evidence to executive staff within your organisation to demonstrate its effectiveness and justify further marketing and delivery of the program.
“Especially when they [older participants] said that they didn’t want it to stop, it made us feel good that we’d made a difference in their life” (Jackie – Aged care support staff)
“I think from the very start, the training that we had was really great and really well prepared us for running the program, even doing the assessments and everything. There was some measures in there I may not have been familiar with, but we went through them in the training, so that was all very easy and seamless.” (Charlie – Allied health professional)