Mealtime Assistance

As a leading Australian Disability Service Provider, Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA) knows the risks of choking and aspiration pneumonia. In 2019, research conducted by the University of NSW Faculty of Medicine found that respiratory disease was the primary cause of death for people with a disability, where aspiration pneumonia was the most common cause of respiratory death. It also found safe mealtime guidelines were not being adhered to due to lack of staff knowledge and/or understaffing.

Judy Williamson – Training Alliance Senior Manager “The aim of this course is for learners to develop skills to support people with a disability to have enjoyable and safe meals. From the initial stages of development, our goal has been to create a comprehensive, engaging, cost and time effective learning solution to support disability support workers at CPA and across the sector in mealtime assistance”.

In developing the course, we drew on the knowledge of multiple subject matter experts, including Clinical Consultant Speech Pathologists, our Digital Learning & Development Specialist. This online course enables participants to:

• Recognise the importance of mealtimes.
• Recognise signs of swallowing difficulty.
• Describe the purpose, function, and importance of mealtime plans.
• Follow and implement mealtime plans.
• Explain what to do with any inconsistencies or difficult to follow instructions in a mealtime plan.
• Describe the IDDSI Framework©.

The training also covers strategies that promote personal dignity, safe swallow, appropriate seating and positioning, and mealtime assistance techniques.

Training Alliance is proud of what they’ve achieved in creating this learning module; some highlights include:

• We have ensured the neuromuscular animations are medically accurate.
• For many disability support workers, English is not their first language. In developing this course, we have considered language, building concepts sequentially, and the use of videos and animations to support learners.
• Our design has significantly reduced the seat time (from in-person training) without skipping any vital content.
• The eLearning design caters for DSPs with various levels of experience. It is suitable for induction learning and as a refresher in mealtime assistance.
• We identified ‘average’ or ‘below average’ practices currently being employed across the sector, and we aim to lift them by ‘raising the bar’ to CPA’s best practice standards.

Testing and quality assurance checks were performed at every milestone by multiple reviewers. As a result, the go-live product is of the highest quality, with no errors reported to date.

Feedback on the online learning design is easy to navigate, easy to understand, visually engaging, interactive, and enjoyable.

We’re pleased to announce that this course recently won a 2021 Gold Learnx Award in the category of ‘Best Shift-It-Online eLearning Design’.

• New Unit ID: 34502
• Duration: 45 minutes

Pressure injury prevention

This course is recommended for disability support practitioners. It equips participants with the knowledge and skills to prevent pressure injuries and provides vital support to clients at risk of pressure injuries.

A pressure injury (also known as a bedsore or pressure ulcer) is an area of injured skin. Pressure injuries (PIs) can result in painful prolonged hospital stays, and at their worst, can be fatal.

As well as a pronounced emotional and physical cost to vulnerable people suffering from PIs, organisations face a significant financial burden when these occur. The estimated annual treatment cost of PIs across Australia is above $983 million, approximately 1.9% of all public health expenditure (Nguyen K‐H, Chaboyer W, Whitty JA. Pressure injury in Australian public hospitals: a cost‐of‐illness study. Aust Health Rev. 2015;39(3):329‐336.)

Pressure Injury avoidance is an essential consideration for any care facility or service; most PIs are considered preventable when correct prevention strategies are implemented. This online course will help disability support practitioners and others understand what pressure injuries are and how they are caused. 

The online content also covers: 

• Who is at increased risk of pressure injuries? 
• Why prevention is so important 
• How to prevent pressure injuries in the workplace 
• The stages of pressure injury development 
• How to recognise, report and effectively respond to pressure injuries 

There is a short online assessment at the end of this course.

• New Unit ID: 34498
• Duration: 40 minutes