Written by Dr Priyanka Vandersman, Senior Research Fellow, RePaDD and End of Life Directions for Aged Care (ELDAC).

On the Sunshine Coast, Sundale has long been a trusted name in aged care. With seven residential aged care communities, alongside retirement villages and in-home care services, they have a deep footprint in supporting older people and their families to live with dignity, comfort, and connection.

Over the years, Sundale has drawn on resources from RePaDD projects such as PalliAGED and ELDAC to strengthen their workforce. They also host their own national event – the Sundale Palliative Care Conference – a day dedicated to building staff knowledge, skills, and confidence in palliative care. I’ve had the privilege of presenting at their past conferences, and each time I’ve been struck by their commitment to creating a culture where end-of-life care is seen as not just necessary, but as deeply human.

This year, Sundale’s ambitions grew even further. Rather than simply hosting another conference, they reached out to us at RePaDD to collaborate more closely – aligning their event to fall on the same week as the National Palliative Care Conference in Brisbane. Their focus was clear: to go back to basics, to pause on the “how” of palliative care, and instead start with the “why.”

For the past few months, we’ve worked closely with Sundale’s Learning and Development Manager, Dhanya Francis, to shape a program that would serve not just their own workforce, but the wider aged care community. Staff from all seven Sundale sites were invited, as well as colleagues from neighbouring aged care homes. Together, we listened, mapped the needs, and considered what knowledge and skills would most empower staff.

This collaborative process led to a rich and thoughtful program, bringing in voices from across the sector: the SPACE team, experts from the QVAD team, and even those working in funeral planning. The result was not a narrow focus on clinical skills alone, but a broad conversation about what it means to build a culture of palliative care in aged care.

We explored vital questions:

• How do we normalise death as part of life?
• How can palliative care be understood not as an add-on, but as core to the work of aged care?
• How do we strengthen care at points of transition and decline?
• How do we support families with compassion and clarity?
• How do we protect staff wellbeing in emotionally demanding roles?
• How do we respond to cultural diversity at the end of life?

These are not easy questions, but they are the important ones – especially at a time when aged care in Australia is navigating once-in-a-generation reform, alongside shifting community expectations, a growing ageing population, and the complex realities of longer lifespans.

The most encouraging part of this year’s engagement has been Sundale’s decision to pause and take a step back. Rather than asking only what we do, they have leaned into the deeper question of why we do it. Why palliative care matters. Why supporting people in their final months of life is not only a professional duty, but a shared responsibility across aged care, research, and the wider community.

It is a privilege for us at RePaDD to walk alongside services like Sundale in these conversations. Because at its heart, aged care is not only about living – it is about ageing, caring, dying, and grieving. And when services choose to invest in their staff and their culture in this way, they are investing in something that will ripple out far beyond their walls: into families, communities, and the everyday experiences of people at the end of their lives.