Call for palliative care volunteer army in Queensland

In a push to mirror programs in other states, a program has been proposed that would see an army of palliative care volunteers mobilised across the state.

An army of palliative care volunteers needs to be mobilised across Queensland so people at the end of their lives aren’t dying alone.

In a push to mirror programs in NSW, Victoria and the ACT, the state government is being urged to roll out a program that would see thousands of volunteers helping at home and in hospitals and hospices.

The $4m-a-year program, proposed by Palliative Care Queensland (PCQ), forms part of the $247m-a-year funding request that experts insist is desperately needed to help the sector in Queensland.

Palliative Care NSW chief executive Linda Hansen said there were about 1250 volunteers in the southern state.

“The NSW government has funded us to set up the volunteer services support program and that is designed to support the volunteer services in NSW,” she said.

“To identify areas where there are gaps and try and support the establishment and development of services.”

The push follows the launch of The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail’s Dignity in death campaign which revealed Queenslanders were dying in emergency rooms and without their loved ones. According to PCQ, the majority of specialist services in Queensland don’t have a formal palliative care volunteering program.

PCQ chief executive Shyla Mills said thousands of people would be needed for the “volunteer village”.

“A lot of people do this naturally through their community groups like families, but because a lot of people in Queensland have families interstate ... often people don’t have their families close to them so they aren’t able to do it,” she said. “So that’s why we need this formalised mechanism.

“It helps people to not die alone.”

Ms Mills said Queensland’s hospices had wonderful volunteering programs and the government should initially introduce a system where people could acquire blue cards and other necessary training, before putting the call out for volunteers.

“We need to see this as a community model,” she said.

The funding would be divided across 29 specialist palliative care services, including the 16 hospital and health services, enabling them to have a trained volunteer manager, access to designated software to allow recruitment and rostering, and then capacity for ongoing support. Ms Hansen said volunteers were essential to multidisciplinary care and they were vital in helping people stay home if that’s where they wanted to be.

Originally published as Call for palliative care volunteer army in Queensland