ELDAC Linkages Program Showcase: a national success

A guest blog by ELDAC Linkages Program Facilitators Jennifer Gavin, Rebecca Moore and Diana Harrison.

The ELDAC Linkages Program hosted a Showcase in Canberra on Friday 2 June 2023. This event was an opportunity to bring together the participating aged care services from Phase 2 of the program and key sector representatives from across Australia. There were 150 attendees from all states and territories. It provided a forum to promote the translation of knowledge into policy and practice in the palliative and aged care context.

The day started with a moving and meaningful consumer perspective, ‘Reflecting on the why’ by Bonnie Thomas. Bonnie shared her story by highlighting exemplars of caring that her late husband, her family and herself received during their palliative care experience in residential aged care. Bonnie's presentation provided an opportunity for everyone in the room to reflect on the impact of the care they provide.

Presentations from representatives of participating services focused on the following areas: building capacity to provide palliative care and advance care planning; multidisciplinary team approach to palliative care and advance care planning; and integrated care - palliative care and advance care planning.

These services gave their unique insight into their journey during this program, what they achieved, benefits and highlights, as well as sharing their learnings and challenges. Participating services were from aged care home services as well as residential aged care, and represented the variety of size, location and diversity of the aged care sector involved in ELDAC Linkages Program. All services were represented by a rolling slideshow celebrating their achievements and benefits of participation.

Distinguished Professor Patsy Yates AM provided an overview of Phase 2 of the ELDAC Linkages Program that 107 aged care services from across Australia participated in from 2020-2023. The ELDAC Linkages Program is a facilitated palliative care and advance care planning initiative that aims to improve the quality of end of life care for all older Australians receiving aged care. The program is underpinned by evidence-based strategies to enhance linkages between aged, primary and specialist palliative care providers and is supported by the Linkages Toolkit. This presentation delivered some of the initial data that has been submitted by the participating services on areas of focus and improvement.  

Professor Deborah Parker highlighted the ELDAC Toolkits covering residential aged care, home care, primary care, end of life law, primary care and improving linkages, as well as the recently released dementia and allied health toolkits. A new ELDAC toolkit focusing on managing risk is in development.

An outline of the ELDAC website and summary of the range of freely available resources were demonstrated by Professor Jennifer Tieman. These resources include the Self-Care Room, Home Care App, and resources that can support services in implementing initiatives and building digital and technological capabilities.

The Showcase provided an opportunity for all participating services to network, learn and share experiences. The feedback from the event has been overwhelmingly positive and attendees took away a number of ideas and suggestions to discuss and progress back with their teams.

For more detail regarding the ELDAC Linkages Program please see the Linkages Program page of the ELDAC website.