The purpose of this report is to describe the key themes and findings from online surveys of aged care consumers and aged care providers, regarding best practice models for engagement between consumers and providers.

These surveys have highlighted that, while much information exists and some providers are doing great work in this area, others are overwhelmed by the amount of information available and are seeking simple, easy to follow resources that support them to strengthen their engagement with consumers.

It is important that any new resources:

• emphasise the importance and benefits of effective consumer engagement as an integrated part of the Aged Care Quality Standards

• include a range of strategies targeted to meet the needs of providers with various levels of understanding of, and expertise in, consumer engagement (including basic day-to-day tips to more broad service design)

• are concise and direct providers to further information (including publicly available toolkits and templates identified through the literature review) where this may be helpful

• provide examples of different approaches that have been implemented successfully in other organisations

• are broadly promoted as better practice and are progressively reviewed to incorporate new strategies and tools as these become apparent.