Spotlight on palliative care
The government and providers are announcing new initiatives to coincide with Palliative Care Week.
The Commonwealth Government has marked Palliative Care Week by announcing a $14.4 million package to provide extra palliative care services.
Included in the package is an $11 million two-year local grant project that will help community groups and aged care providers to support people receiving palliative care.
“Funding these initiatives will help support the patients receiving care and the thousands of dedicated Australians who volunteer and work in palliative care,” said the Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliot.
“I commend everyone who works in this area for their commitment to delivering quality care.”
Queensland provider, Blue Care has also announced that two of its facilities will be involved in a research project to improve palliative care resources for residential aged care facilities throughout Australia.
Blue Care Amaroo Aged Care Facility in northern New South Wales and Iona Aged Care Facility in Queensland will be used as demonstration sites in the study, which will be led by the University of Queensland and Blue Care’s Research and Practice Development Centre.
The Centre’s acting director, Associate Professor Deborah Parker said a lot of research has already been done in Australia to identigy the best ways of caring for dying residents in aged care homes.
“The project aims to consolidate this information and develop an evidence-based model of palliative care, which will be available to all Australian facilities via a Toolkit,” she said.
The Toolkit will outline a step by step approach to implementing best-practice palliative care.
“Staff working in residential aged care are responsible for people with many different needs, including wound care, dementia, continence and rehabilitation as well as palliative needs,” said Associate Professor Parker.
“The Toolkit will help them identify the special needs of the dying and provide them with better resources and support to help improve palliative care.”
The project is part of the Commonwealth Government’s Encouraging Better Practice in Residential Aged Care program.
