Aim
Established by the Department of Health, the Victorian Aboriginal Palliative Care Collaborative to tackle the barriers Aboriginal Victorians face in accessing culturally-responsive palliative care services and enable specialist palliative care services to be better able to provide care to Aboriginal people in Victoria.
Outcomes
The collaborative found three key issues were impacting on Aboriginal people’s ability to access to palliative care: a lack of shared understanding of potential cultural differences as well as what constitutes palliative care; health worker’s limited clinical knowledge and inter-agency networking; and, inadequate systems and processes to ensure culturally-appropriate care.
The collaborative invited project grant submissions from Victorian agencies to improve culturally appropriate care to Aboriginal people resulting in support of three projects.
Those projects informed the collaborative’ s recommendations to the State Government on ways to improve Aboriginal people’s access to specialist palliative care in Victoria, including: establishing a unit of competency in Aboriginal palliative care for Aboriginal health workers; exploring best practice examples of advance care planning tools; establishing dedicated roles for Aboriginal people in palliative care teams; fostering trust and respect through meaningful and dynamic partnerships; and, establishing a mechanism to monitor cultural responsive palliative care in Victoria.
Project Team
- Project Lead, A/Prof Mark Boughey, Centre for Palliative Care
- Project Manager, Steve Kirkbright, Centre for Palliative Care
- Members of the VAPCC Steering Group included:
- Centre for Palliative Care (Lead Agency)
- Victorian Government, Department of Health & Human Services
- Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation
- Integrated Cancer Service
- Palliative Care Consortia
- Palliative Care Victoria
- Victorian Aboriginal Health Service
- Palliative Care Clinical Network
- Koori Health Unit, The University of Melbourne
Additionally, several organisations shared their resources:
- North East Primary Care Partnership
- Palliative Care Victoria
- Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation
- Victorian Aboriginal Health Service
- Victorian Palliative Care Consortia
- Victorian Palliative Care Services
Key Contact
Steve Kirkbright
e: steven.kirkbright@svha.org.au
Funding Source
The Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.
Key Publications
Click here to download the Final Report.
Useful Resources
Click here to download a pdf of useful resources.