A community awareness campaign has been launched by the Palliative Care Cultural Diversity Forum, held last week at the Treacy Conference Centre in Parkville as part of the National Palliative Care Week.
The campaign, thought-provokingly titled ‘Something Things Are Too Important to Be Left Unsaid’, aims at encouraging discussion of issues around palliative care among culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.
Former Victorian Governor Sir James Gobbo, Patron of Palliative Case Victoria, helped launch the campaign and emphasised the need to improve awareness and use of palliative care services for people from multicultural backgrounds.
“It is imperative to tailor palliative care services to the distinct needs of various CALD communities since every community has its own beliefs and practices with regard to end-of-life care,” he said.
“There is much to be learnt from CALD communities, and events such as the Palliative Care Cultural Diversity Forum are an effective way to bring together committed professionals from various organisations to work together to establish best practices that are relevant and appropriate for members of their communities.”
To help spread the message, the campaign has also released vignettes, available in English and 10 other languages including Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Vietnamese. Designed to raise awareness of palliative care, the vignette encourages the community to talk to elderly relatives about where they want to stay, who they want to take care of them and end of life care.
For more information and to watch the awareness campaign vignette go to www.pallcarevic.asn.au/