e-Zee+Feet

= e-Zee Feet =

** Name: ** Angela Baker

 * Role in the project: ** Project Manager
 * Email: ** angela@islandhealthcollege.com.au
 * Phone: **6236 9011



= CASE STUDY =

= Project Profile: =

What is the problem or opportunity you are addressing in this project?
This project came about from a desire expressed by our business partners to be able to train their employees (in aged care and disability services) in the skills to provide a selection of reflexology techniques to the clients/residents in their care. There was a need to provide employees with these skills to improve the health and wellbeing of clients/residents, recognising that such improvements lead to benefits for clients/residents and also for staff.

The business partners wanted the employees to develop skills and techniques that were non-invasive with clients/residents, could be easily implemented in different settings, eg. at the bedside, or in a day care setting, and used over different available time frames eg. 5 minutes, or 20 minutes, depending on the demands on staff.

Who are the learners and how will they benefit from this project?

At Vaucluse Gardens, the pilot employee group will be 10 team leaders of the extended care assistants group. They have been identified by their employer as generally having no previous exposure to e-learning.

At Parkside Foundation, the pilot employee group will be a dozen support workers in community access. They work with a range of clients who may have differing degrees of disability, and across a large age range. Staff already do first aid training via e-learning, and some do medication-endorsed training online.

The demands on the time of employees in aged care and disability services are well documented in our community. Our business partners have expressed difficulties in getting staff to training, and they desired flexibility around the delivery of learning tools.

They wished to have learning tools that would provide this flexibility, and would also be able to be delivered repeatedly, so that the learning resources would always be at hand for staff to use, eg. to quickly refresh their learning on a specific technique to use with an individual client/resident.

E-learning allows employees to learn reflexology skills in a flexible time-efficient manner, with the tools available for repeated use when desired. They are able to see clearly demonstrated techniques on video that they can replicate with clients/residents, and easily access the supporting written learning resources. E-learning enables them to access tools in natural therapies within their own workplace.

Staff job satisfaction can increase as they see the health and wellbeing benefits of reflexology treatment in the clients/residents. Since learning these techniques enables therapeutic touch in a non-invasive manner, and allows staff to move beyond the provision of care just in a practical sense, it becomes a new focus in their working role.

How are you currently delivering this training? (ie prior to the project)
We are currently delivering this training by face-to-face classes only.

Describe how the innovation you are embedding through the project will change this delivery
Our RTO directly benefits from this project because it assists us in developing multimedia skills that we want to have in-house and use in other areas of training. Since e-learning is an important focus for our training and assessment methodology, we wish to extend these skills potentially across all the qualifications we deliver.

We hope that through this project, the aged care and disability service sectors in the community will see the benefits of natural therapies when used specifically and appropriately in the workplace. We hope the benefits that clients/residents, and staff, acquire through this project, will lead to greater use of natural therapies in these settings. We also hope that staff and administration in these workplaces see the benefits of e-learning for their staff, as a flexible and cost-efficient training method.


 * Please list at least 5 key words (comma separated) that people can use to find your project (more the better) **

health, reflexology, videos, multimedia, disability, aged, care