Dr Kate Barnett OAM, Founder and Managing Director
In recognition of her contribution to the fields of ageing and aged care, Kate Barnett has been honoured with an Order of Australia Medal (2018) and a Flinders University Distinguished Alumni Medal (2017).
In 2014 Kate was awarded a Churchill Fellowship which enabled her to study the Teaching Nursing Home model in North America where it originated in the 1990s.
Profile and Experience
Key to understanding older people’s needs and expectations is co-design and Kate works regularly with experts in this field, particularly the Global Centre for Modern Ageing and COTASA’s Plug-In. Kate is a Strategic Advisor (Social Gerontology) for the GCMA. She also works with private sector organisations advising them on age-friendly design, services and programs.
Recently this involved working as Project Lead for the GCMA in partnership with a leading property developer and builder as they, and their architects, developed an innovative residential and commercial complex in Adelaide. The GCMA team provided advice on age-friendly design features for the residential component of this complex. Kate has also worked with the SA Office of Ageing to write and edit its Policy Statement for housing opportunities presented by an ageing population – Housing for Life: Designed for Living.
Understanding Ageing
In 2022, Kate worked with the GCMA who were commissioned by a regional aged care provider to lead the co-design of a new Healthy Ageing Precinct on land adjacent to their existing aged care services. This project combined research evidence with community consultation to inform the best use of this land, with a strong focus on intergenerational exchange.
Since late 2019 Kate has been the Australian Research Lead for a cross-national study of loneliness and social connection in retirement living communities. This is a collaboration involving major aged care provider Life Care, the University of Bath and UK retirement living provider Guild Living. Kate evaluated Life Care’s innovative Hoffman model of care, support and wellbeing, an international evidence-based model that was delivered for the first time in Australia at Life Care Active and is being implemented across Life Care residential and retirement living communities.
In 2020 and 2021, Kate Barnett was a member of the core Flinders University team undertaking Stage 1 of the development of the Aged Care Centre for Growth and Translational Research. This national project involved designing, in consultation with key aged care ecosystem stakeholders, an operating model that will support the translation of research evidence into aged care practice while building workforce capability. The Flinders team succeeded in obtaining funding to establish the Centre which is now known as Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA).
In 2018 Kate prepared a report that drew together all of the work undertaken by the South Australian Innovation Hub in relation to quality, including its evidence-based Quality of Life Framework. The Hub is an industry community of practice driven by their shared commitment to translating ideas, innovation, learning and research into practice with a strong focus on achieving best outcomes for consumers.
Technology and Ageing
One of Kate Barnett’s research specialisations involves technology and how to maximise its potential contribution to ageing well. She was the Lead Writer of Australia’s first Technology Roadmap for the Aged Care Sector and continues to work with the Aged Care Industry IT Council (ACIITC) in the implementation of the Roadmap. In 2019 this included updating the literature review that informed the Roadmap, and writing a submission to the Royal Commission on Aged Care Quality and Safety on the role of technology in enhancing aged care services. In 2020 Kate worked with the Council as the Research Lead for the first national digital maturity assessment of aged and community care providers (CARE-IT) and wrote the environmental scan accompanying this major project.
The Global Centre for Modern Ageing works in partnerships with a number of large international organisations, including ‘big tech’ firms entering the health and ageing sectors. In 2021 GCMA appointed Kate as their Subject Expert in their strategic collaboration with a leading technology platform provider who was seeking to build pathways into and working relationships with the Australian aged care sector.
Teaching and Research in Aged Care Model
Kate is acknowledged as an expert on the Teaching Research Aged Care Services (TRACS) model (also known as the Teaching Nursing Home model). This involves partnerships between a) aged care providers and universities to undertake research designed to improve quality of care, and b) aged care and vocational education providers to deliver best practice student clinical education and workforce development. From 2012 to 2015 she led the national evaluation of TRACS, Australia’s first government funded program supporting this model, and involving 16 partnerships across Australia. Kate continues to work closely with TRACS providers and is part of an international network of researchers and service providers applying the model.
In 2019, in response to interest expressed by Commissioners in the model, Kate Barnett wrote a submission to the Royal Commission on Aged Care Quality and Safety on the role of TRACS in building quality aged care services (Ref# AWF.001.01722). This resulted in the Commission making a formal recommendation (Recommendation 83) in its Final Report about the re-establishment of TRACS.
Culturally Inclusive Ageing and Aged Care
Kate Barnett’s PhD thesis involved a cross cultural study of attitudes to ageing, building on research commissioned by the SA Office for the Ageing and published as Participants not Observers: attitudes to ageing and the aspirations and expectations of South Australians born between 1925 and 1955, Ageing Series No 2, (1999) Office for the Ageing. This research involved interviews with 300 people from seven different cultural backgrounds, and from seven different spiritual backgrounds, asking them to define in their own words what growing ‘old’ meant to them, what would be the features of the ideal ‘old age’ for them, and how the service system could support the vision they portrayed. This thesis built on many years working with ethnic communities around Australia and evaluating pioneer models of culturally inclusive aged care. Kate Barnett wrote the ageing and aged care policy paper that was one of the papers forming the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia and was commissioned by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to prepare this in 1988.
Nationally Kate Barnett has undertaken multiple projects commissioned by the Australian government to inform policy, including writing the National Framework for the Training of Aged Care Providers in the Delivery of Culturally Inclusive Care and, as part of the Best Practice Demonstration Projects in Ethnic Aged Care series, assessing the applicability of the Linkages partnership model to provide aged care services to small ethnic communities, developing with Alzheimer’s Australia a National Framework for Culturally Inclusive Dementia Services, and evaluating the Ethnic Aged Services Strategy.
In South Australia she developed the Office for the Ageing’s three aged care plans for ethnic communities with a significant proportion of older members – the Italian, Dutch and Polish communities - and has evaluated numerous pathfinding programs such as, Ethnic Link Services and the Multicultural Respite Care program.
Kate Barnett has worked with Southern Cross Care Victoria designing a package of information, training and support for its multicultural workforce.
Standout was commissioned by Ethnic Link Services to write a report documenting its 30 year history (having undertaken the first evaluation of this Service in 1990).
In recent years she has also undertaken a series of evaluations of the innovative capacity building programs developed by the Multicultural Communities’ Council of South Australia.
