Evaluation of the impact of The Little Things training on personal care assistants' confidence to communicate with residents in aged care

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate The Little Things training program, designed to assist personal care assistants (PCAs) from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds to communicate more effectively with aged care residents. Methods: This project included PCAs from residential aged care facilities (RACFs) and Certificate III students from registered training organisations (RTOs) in Melbourne, Australia. A control group (n = 18) was also included. Measures included the following: pre- and posttraining confidence to communicate and rankings of task importance; posttraining perceived change in confidence; and posttraining impacts on practice. Results: Altogether, 75 PCAs and 30 RTO students participated in Intake I of the training and 31 PCAs and 34 RTO students in Intake 2. Confidence increased in The Little Things participants relative to those in the control group (β = 0.11, T = 1.99, p = 0.05). Change did not vary by Intake or whether someone was in the RACF or RTO group, F (2, 147) = 0.58, p = 0.5; nor by sociodemographic characteristics. Most training participants (84%) thought their ability to communicate with older people would ‘improve a lot’ as a result of the training. Training participants also ranked the importance of duties such as ‘Speaking in a friendly and informal way to older people’ more highly after than before the training (p = 0.01), while little change was observed in the control group. Conclusions: The Little Things program increased training participants' confidence to communicate and shifted perceived priorities towards interacting with residents in a way that enhanced resident well-being.