KORA set to reimagine dementia education across Aotearoa New Zealand
We’re delighted to announce Alzheimers NZ’s Dementia Learning Centre (DLC) will launch an innovate new project to improve learning and support, later this year.
KORA (Knowledge, Outcomes, Reflection, Action) is being supported by the Workforce Futures Fund | Tahua Rāngamahi Anamata. We thank them for their generous support!
The national project has two main focuses: supporting people to maintain their independence and responding when people experience distress. The competency and knowledge frameworks for KORA will be designed around these two focus areas.
“While Aotearoa New Zealand has existing qualifications and unit standards for the workforce, what we do not yet have are evidence-based competency and knowledge frameworks specifically designed to guide practice in these two critical areas,” says DLC Director Caroline Bartle.
“This is not about adding another qualification or compliance requirement. KORA will develop frameworks grounded in the best available evidence and recognising that technology is now an integral part of how we learn, monitor, report, and improve in practice.”
The framework will be supported by practical resources and a national resource website, with the ambition of reaching 27,000 workers – piloted across residential care, home-based support, and community services.
KORA will develop an innovative AI-enabled platform that brings learning and support directly to staff at the point of practice on their phone.
“Staff learn all day, every day through experience, through relationships, and sometimes through mistakes. Most of that learning goes unseen and unsupported,” says Caroline.
“We all use our phones to remember things and find answers. Why shouldn’t the workforce have that same kind of support, designed specifically for the work they do?”
Caroline’s doctoral research, undertaken here in Aotearoa New Zealand, explores how technology can connect everyday learning in practice settings to broader organisational improvement.
She says KORA represents a fundamentally different way of thinking about learning one that recognises development doesn’t only happen in a training room.
“At its core is the ability to amplify voices and make learning practices more widely known – the kind of insights that don’t sit neatly in the rigid form of clinical data but are essential to good practice.
“By prompting staff to reflect, supporting competency assessment, and feeding into organisational learning, KORA opens up different approaches that can drive real and lasting change.”
Beyond improving outcomes for people living with dementia, KORA aims to tackle costs of recruitment and retention for the sector.
The project has been designed to be transferable, with potential to benefit disability support, mental health and addiction and social services.
“We’re looking forward to working with partners across our dementia community to bring this project to life,” says Caroline.
If you or your organisation would like to be involved in the co-design of the frameworks, participate in the pilot or find out more, get in touch with the Dementia Learning Centre.