A 'True North Statement for Care': charting the course to better care for all Australians

Objective To shift the narrative from 'deficit dialogues' in health and social care in Australia, we aimed to generate a series of consensus 'ambition' statements representing what peak care stakeholders in Australia want health and social care to look like in the future. Methods A multiphase co-design study with Australian 'care' stakeholders was undertaken. This consisted of a desk-based audit of Australian health and social care organisations (n =9) and a pre-forum survey (n =21 responses) (activity 1), the findings of which informed the national forum activities (activity 2, n =31 organisations), which became the content for the Delphi survey (activity 3, n =28 organisations). Results Through this process we distilled five ambition statements and 39 descriptors. These statements are our True North Statement for Better Care, providing a starting point to guide individual, organisation and system redesign across the life span. The statements require action at individual consumer, workforce and system level. Conclusions Creating the True North Statement for Better Care provides a united direction for heterogeneous groups to work together to improve care for consumers, their workforce and the systems they work in. This is an important initiative to change the way we value, talk about, do, own and research care. Further user testing is required to ensure the statements can be translated into action.