Service Managers in Aged Care

Service managers in aged care oversee the daily operations of aged care facilities or services. They plan, coordinate and evaluate residential and personal care services provided to individuals and families in aged care.

Given the complex service delivery environment, the following resources are aimed to help you build on available resources and strategies and find ways to improve your service delivery when offering end-of-life care.

We need to build our capacity in providing palliative care

The changing environment has highlighted end of life, advance care planning and palliative care.

Your service may need to review its service capability, education and care processes to meet the changes introduced in 2025 including the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, a human rights-based Aged Care Act and the Support at Home Program. Recognising the need for palliative care and advance care planning is an important first step.

The ELDAC Care Model helps you think about the care needs of someone who may be declining and approaching the end of life.
The strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards highlight the role of palliative care in Standard Clinical Care Outcome 5.7 Palliative care and end-of-life care. The Aged Care Safety and Quality Commission has developed a draft guidance for providers.
Palliative Care Australia includes information on the National Palliative Care Standards and detail on the National Palliative Care Projects.
palliAGED has a Supporting Services section which helps services consider how they can train and support their multidisciplinary workforce, establish care processes that can identify and respond to changing needs, and facilitate compassionate conversations.

My service needs to collaborate more effectively

As a service manager, you are in a unique position to appraise the strengths and weaknesses of your service in its care delivery, and identify opportunities where improvements can be made.

Access the ELDAC Linkages Toolkit for support in learning how your service can work together within a broader multidisciplinary team to provide high-quality palliative care to older people.

How ELDAC can help

ELDAC has a range of resources that can help you. Given your role in managing an aged care service, you can review the resources and their value for your service.

The ELDAC Linkages Program has been developed to improve connections between aged care, primary care, and specialist palliative care providers. A facilitator works with you and your service to help improve the quality of end-of-life care.
The ELDAC End of Life Law Toolkit contains useful resources on common issues that arise in aged care related to advance care planning, voluntary assisted dying, substitute decision-making and managing disputes.
Information on Diverse Population Groups means that services can plan to deliver person-centred care for all older people regardless of background, location or beliefs.
Consider training and educational opportunities provided to your staff to support the provision of palliative care within your service (visit the I am an educator page for further information).

Embedding systems and processes

Review your quality improvement, audit and reporting processes. Tools that can assist with service audit with respect to palliative care and end-of-life care include the:

More information can also be found under the Organisational Support sections of the ELDAC Residential Aged Care and Home Care Toolkits.

The ELDAC Digital Dashboard can help your service better track and visually represent key end-of-life care processes and indicators relevant for reporting and clinical decision making.

National Palliative Care Program Supports

The Australian Government also offers support for aged care providers to facilitate safe, reliable, and high-quality care for older people.

Program of Experience in the Palliative Approach (PEPA) and IPEPA offer free placements and workshops in palliative care which can provide an opportunity for you to learn from experienced palliative care staff. PEPA Aged Care also offers tailored onsite training in aged care.
The Advance Project® has a dementia specific course for clinicians and managers.
palliAGED has a suite of resources for aged care including practice tips, booklets for nurses and for care workers, palliAGED modules which introduce the basic concepts of palliative care, forms for practice and educational videos. Consider what you can do to support nurses (136kb pdf) and/or care workers (254kb pdf) within your service or organisation.
CareSearch has a GP Hub to support GPs to provide palliative care in the community, including in aged care settings.
Advance Care Planning Australia provides a National Advisory Service – phone line, email and web enquiry service to connect people to resources, information, and services. They also have a website and resources for the health and aged care workforce.