Eastern Palliative Care volunteers honoured with major award

It is this ethos that led to Eastern Palliative Care being honoured for Outstanding Achievement in Palliative Care at this year's National Palliative Care Awards.

Working across Melbourne's Eastern Suburbs, the team of about 240 volunteers works alongside the organisation's staff to support clients who are facing the end stages of life, but wish to die in their own homes.

Program Development and Volunteer Services Manager Krystal Wallis said the dedicated team put in more than 22,500 hours of work over the previous financial year.

Volunteers range in age from their early 20s to their 80s. In addition to students and retirees, the team also features many working professionals, including doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, small business owners, and at least one politician.

Ms Wallis said the organisation works very hard at getting to know volunteers, ensuring they will find their work with the organisation both educational and challenging.

"We want to make sure that whatever role we've got them in, it's something they're going to fly in," she said.

Volunteers work in a range of different areas, including hairdressers, photographers who take pictures of loved ones with family members, friends or pets, dog walkers, and volunteers who take their own dogs to clients' homes for visits.

There are also volunteers who sit with clients to give carers a bit of a break, or take clients on outings to places like shops, or local cafes. Others knit, quilt or make comfort cushions.

Then there are the volunteers who work in bereavement, following up with carers for 13 months after they have lost a loved one, providing assistance and making sure they are finding outlets to reconnect them with the community.

One of the initiatives Ms Wallis is most proud of is the organisation's biography program.

The program sees volunteers helping clients to write their life stories down before they die.

"It's allowing clients who are in a highly medicalised state of their life a moment in time each week to step away from that and realise they haven't changed," she said.

"Having a biographer come in...allows them to remember what they are going through is only a moment in their lifespan, not the entirety of their life."

About 1600 biographies have been completed to date. Krystal said they are a way of making people know they are seen and valued in their final days - including "forgotten" members of society.

"It's an incredible gift to give someone before they die," she said.

The program was the subject of a three year study by PhD graduate Karly Edgar from Latrobe University. The research also sparked a podcast series called Once Upon a Story which is available on popular podcast app Podbean.

As a base requirement, volunteers should generally be willing to spend several hours a week visiting a designated client, although flexibility is also a core requirement as client's health status, or even death may interfere with visits. Volunteers need to be living in the Eastern Melbourne area and should also be somewhat comfortable with technology such as smartphones.

"Our volunteers need to have an element of respect, they've got to be kind, and they've got to be all about the other person, because this role can't be about you, it has to be about the clients," Ms Wallis said.

"We can have a variety of personalities, but at the end of it all, each volunteer is willing to give to someone else and make someone's day better.

Ms Wallis said emotional resilience is also a very important quality, as volunteers have to go through the pain of loss repeatedly.

"When a client dies it does impact them (the volunteer). They will go through their own grieving as they got to know someone and that person is gone, and then they will do it over again."

To be selected, volunteers go through a process of interviews, police and working with children checks. If accepted, they then undertake 40 hours of training, covering a range of topics including illness within the body, death and dying, grief and loss, communication and spirituality.

Krystal said it was "amazing" to be honoured by Palliative Care Australia with so much work going on in palliative volunteering. She said the award was a well deserved reward for the volunteers and all the outstanding work they do.

For more information on Eastern Palliative Care click here.