An innovative model of an aged care hostel in the prison setting: process of benchmarking and evaluation

The Australian prison population, like the population in general, is ageing. Services in both areas have had to evolve to care for the increased proportion of aged people, especially those with complex challenges to their health and wellbeing. The proposed construction of hostel services for aged inmates in New South Wales is a recent innovation. Although not reported in the literature to have previously occurred in Australia, such hostels are becoming increasingly common in North America, although there has been no reported rigorous evaluation of outcomes. This paper discusses a proposed study to evaluate a prison aged care hostel in New South Wales and provides a plausible research framework within which to evaluate prison hostel outcomes.