New Director Tool: Board governance in the aged care sector

The Interim Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, Neglect, released on 31 October 2019, said the system designed to care for older Australians was woefully inadequate.

The Final Report, due in November 2020, will focus on governance and accountability in the sector and the need for a fundamental overhaul of the design, objectives, regulation, and funding of aged care in Australia.

It is against this backdrop of due diligence that directors and boards of aged care organisations are assessing their policies and practices – to both ensure that governance frameworks comply with the new Aged Care Quality Standards, and to establish a robust organisational culture of diligent and authentic service quality and safety.

To support this assessment, the AICD has published 'Board governance in the aged care sector'. This latest Director Tool is designed to assist directors consider their duties to protect the vulnerable people under their organisational care and appropriately discharge their director responsibilities. It is not intended to interpret or provide specific guidance on compliance with individual standards nor is it intended as a prescriptive one size fits all solution. Instead, it aims to stimulate thinking and discussion for boards to consider their own governance framework.