Aged and Palliative care services adapt for migrant communities

Surgeon doctor with digital tablet visiting senior male patient in hospital bed at geriatric unit

Australia's older population is growing year-by-year and becoming more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever. With this changing demographic, Australia needs to adapt aged-care and palliative care services to provide services in a culturally-sensitive, patient-led approach. Credit: ckstockphoto/Envato

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Australia's growing older population is more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever. This shift has required aged-care and palliative care facilities to cater their work towards a variety of cultural attitudes and provide information for loved ones in a plethora of languages.

Key Points

According to the 2016 Australian Bureau of Statistics Census, 37 per cent of older Australians were born overseas, or 1.2 million people, and one in six older Australians speak a language other than English at home.
With the changing demographic has come a need to adapt Australia's aged-care and palliative care services.
Palliative Care Victoria’s new project, the Dignified and Respectful Decisions program is offering language-specific resources to ensure that family members and substitute decision-makers can access information and support to assist them as carers.

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