HammondCare in partnership with the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney has been awarded an ARIIA grant for their ‘Supporting implementation of aged care staff initiated advance care planning and palliative care needs assessment for people living with dementia’ project.
HammondCare is leading a national palliative care project funded by the Australian government called the Advance Project www.theadvanceproject.com.au
The Advance Project has recently launched a new suite of dementia-specific resources and training that aim to make initiating end-of-life conversations and assessing palliative care needs of people living with dementia easier, to enable better care. The training is specifically designed for frontline staff working in aged care settings in Australia. The new resources and training were developed based on a literature review and extensive stakeholder engagement. However, the national project does not have scope to support implementation or formal evaluation of the new resources in practice in aged care settings.
This project will involve working with champion sites within HammondCare's residential aged care services to co-design implementation approaches; supporting staff to embed the resources in practice, and formal evaluation of the new resources. The findings will inform ongoing quality improvement of the new resources, training, and organisation wide processes for providing advance care planning and palliative care for people living with dementia in residential aged care. Furthermore, the findings will inform quality improvement of the resources which are available nationally to the aged care sector.