Wellness Approach

"Older people do not aspire to be clients. They aspire to be people"

Helen Q Kivnik 1998

What is the Wellness Approach?

The Wellness approach is a philosophical change in the way of thinking and delivering HACC (Home and Community Care) services in Western Australia.

It supports a move within the WA HACC Program towards the development and implementation of service models that go beyond maintaining clients at their current capacity, but actively work with the client to optimise a client's independence and wellbeing. This aims to replace the former model of doing things ‘for' people by one which seeks to enable people ‘to do as much as possible for themselves'.

The approach assists clients to accommodate their functional disability by learning or re-learning the skills necessary for daily living. For those individuals where re-skilling is not appropriate then the approach is about minimising the functional losses and future dependencies that may develop because of the disease processes. Strategies for maintaining independence can include; energy conservation, work simplification and the use of low cost equipment.

The wellness approach focuses on capacity building, maintaining function and minimising the impact of functional loss.

It identifies what a client can and wants to do, rather than only what they have difficulty with. It focuses on the balance between ‘doing with' versus ‘doing for'. This system gradually encourages clients who have difficulty with activities of daily living to increase their ability, which henceforth increases their self-confidence and respects autonomy.