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End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC

ELDAC is a national specialist palliative care and advance care planning advisory service. ELDAC provides information, guidance, and resources to health professionals and aged care workers to support palliative care and advance care planning to improve the care of older Australians. The project is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care and is delivered by a consortium of three universities and four national peak bodies from aged care, palliative care, and primary care.

The ELDAC website is free to access and offers a range of information and practical tools to support clinicians and care providers to plan and provide quality palliative and end life care. Various printed resource packs can also be ordered via the ELDAC website free of charge. The ELDAC project also offers curated collection of resources and tools, as Toolkits, to support service level processes around palliative and end of life care. There are also several interactive digital tools designed to help aged care workers such as a Home Care App, a Self-Care Room, and a palliative care Digital Dashboard, to name a few. Aged care services wishing to work even more closely with the project can participate in the ELDAC Service Development Program and have a dedicated ELDAC facilitator help build their service level capability around end of life and palliative care.

ELDAC works in partnership with and builds on the work and resources developed by other National Palliative Care projects including, but not limited to, palliAGED, CareSearch, PEPA, PACOP, Advance Care Planning Australia.

Vision and mission

To enable aged care services to deliver effective care at the end of life.

ELDAC builds end of life and palliative caregiving capability at the care provider, service, and sector level.

How ELDAC can help

ELDAC can help by providing you resources and tools to build your skills, knowledge, and confidence in providing care at the end of life. ELDAC can also support aged care services to build their end of life and palliative care processes via their unique set of toolkits, digital technology tools, and an array of quality resources.

Information line

Programs, apps and tools

Recommended links

Last reviewed: March 2023

Information from this partner

Found 37 results

Residential Aged Care - What I can do

This section of the Residential Aged Care (RAC) Toolkit delivers information on how to provide palliative care and advance care planning for people living in residential aged care and for their families.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

End of Life Law - ELDAC

The Legal Toolkit provides practical information about the law at end of life for the aged care sector. It contains useful resources on end of life legal issues commonly encountered in aged care to help you to know the law and to support your practice.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

Respond to Deterioration - Home Care

Clients will experience different illness trajectories depending on the primary diagnosis and presence of other diseases (comorbidities). Across all these illness trajectories, it is important to identify and respond appropriately to deterioration of the client caused by their primary diagnosis or as a result of other disease or events.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

Advance Care Planning - Home Care

An advance care planning discussion will often result in an advance care plan. Advance care plans state preferences about health and personal care and preferred health outcomes.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

Education and Learning - Residential Aged Care

This section of the RAC Toolkit provides opportunity for you to evaluate your learning and development needs and create a personal learning plan. Links are provided to online and other types of resources to help you improve your knowledge, skills and confidence in providing palliative care and advance care planning.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

End of Life Law - Mythbusters Futile or non-beneficial treatment

Myth-Busters: Futile or Non-Beneficial Treatment

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

ELDAC - Home Care

The Home Care Toolkit provides information and guidance to support palliative care and advance care planning for clients and their families.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

End of Life Law - Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment Factsheet

Decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment can be difficult. Sometimes they are made by the person themselves (if they have capacity), and sometimes they are made on behalf of the person (if they no longer have capacity). This factsheet explains the key legal principles about withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

End of Life Law - Voluntary Assisted Dying - Overview

Voluntary assisted dying (VAD) is the assistance provided by a health practitioner to a person with a terminal disease, illness or medical condition to end their life.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

End of Life Law - Protection for administering pain and symptom relief Factsheet

Uncertainty can arise for those giving palliative medication about whether it is lawful, particularly where a person is close to death. This factsheet explains key legal principles about providing palliative medication.

Read more on End of Life Directions for Aged Care ELDAC website

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