Background
The Caring Communities Program aims to improve the quality of palliative care provided in local communities. A key focus of the Program is to develop strong partnerships between palliative care service providers, health professionals, community organisations, carers, and people requiring palliative care.
The Caring Communities Program covers a broad range of activities. These include:
- Education and training for health professionals
- Information, education and support for families, carers and volunteers
- Service enhancement
- Information and awareness for the broader community
- Support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, rural communities and the aged care sector.
Funding
In the 2002 Federal Budget the Australian Government committed $55 million over four years to improve the standard of palliative care in the community. In addition, the Australian Government provided $201.2 million for palliative care under the Australian Health Care Agreements (2003-2008). Of this, $13.2 million has been retained by the Australian Government to implement a national program of initiatives. Using these sources of funding, the Australian Government is implementing the National Palliative Care Program. The Program aims to ensure that for all people with a life-limiting illness:
- Quality of life is maintained
- Support is provided for them to die with dignity in a setting of their choice
- Palliative care is an integral part of a comprehensive health care system.
The Australian Government is implementing the Program by supporting a number of initiatives that increase access to palliative care and which educate and support the community, families, carers and the workforce. The Caring Communities Program is one of these initiatives. The Caring Communities Program provided $4.7 million to 37 local communities for projects covering community education, training for health professionals, education and support for families, carers and volunteers; and support for indigenous communities, rural communities and the aged care sector.
The complete list of projects that received funding can be accessed below:
All of the projects will be completed by 30 June 2006. For more information on the completed projects please click on the link below:
Note: The projects were community-based projects not research aimed to increase community capacity in relation to palliative care. As a result there are different forms of presentation in the Executive Summaries as the funded organisations had varying degrees of experience in, and resources for, managing projects.
Projects
The information provided against each project includes a Project Overview and an Executive Summary. The Project Overview contains basic information on the objectives and activities developed at the beginning of the project. The Executive Summary has been provided at the completion of the project and has been taken from the Final Report to the Department of Health and Ageing. There may be slight changes to the final outcomes of the project reported in the Executive Summary against those stated in the original Project Overview. These variances may have been as a result of a number of factors such as the inability to organise appropriate access to remote communities, resource shortages, resource changes and changes to the scope of the project following consultation with stakeholders.
Evaluation
The Centre for Health Service Development at the University of Wollongong has completed the Evaluation of the Caring Communities Program.
The evaluation hierarchy for evaluating the Program is:
- Level 1: Impact on, and outcomes for, consumers
- patients, families, carers, friends, communities
- Level 2: Impact on, and outcomes for, providers
- professionals, volunteers, organisations
- Level 3: Impact on, and outcomes for, the system
- structures and processes, networks, relationships.
A Palliative Care Evaluation Tool Kit was developed by the University of Wollongong during this Program.
The Centre for Health Service Development at the University of Wollongong hosts information on the Caring Communities Program.
The information and comments contained in the Project Overviews and Executive Summaries on this webpage are those of the funded projects and not necessarily those of the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. This information is designed to assist the palliative community.
This page was last updated on 10 November 2006
Last updated 26 May 2008