Publications

Palliative Care and Voluntary Assisted Dying Forum for multicultural communities

23 September 2025

Health Care Consumer Association (HCCA), Canberra Multicultural Communities Forum, ACT Palliative Care, Canberra Health Services (CHS) Palliative Care Service and ACT Voluntary Assisted Dying Taskforce Team worked together to provide an information session for our multicultural community on Palliative Care and Voluntary Assisted Dying in the ACT. The event brought our multicultural community together to learn how these services can better support them.

We started with Welcome and Acknowledgment to country done by Ivapene Seiuli the Multicultural Liaison Officer at HCCA followed by a HCCA introduction by Deputy Director Kate Gorman.

Our speakers were Paula Sidney from Palliative Care ACT, Kate Reed from ACT Voluntary Assisted Dying Implementation Taskforce, and Michael Chapman from CHS Palliative Care who presented individually and then participated in a group panel discussion facilitated by Kate Gorman.

Closing remarks were made by Chin Wong from the Canberra Multicultural Community Forum (CMCF).

Main takeaways from the forum:

Knowing how and when to connect to end-of-life care is important
Culturally appropriate training for health care workers is crucial
Translated or Easy English resources

The community was very grateful for all the information shared and request that more of these sessions be provided for different multicultural community groups – preferably with an interpreter for communities to understand the information.

Please enjoy the below photos taken at the event.