The Committee for Adelaide, in partnership with Flinders University, hosted members for our latest Fearless Insights Roundtable on The Future of Ageing and Palliative Care in Adelaide.

We were joined by guest speaker Professor Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist and Scientific Director of the Flinders Ageing Alliance, who shared her expertise on improving the quality and safety of care for older Australians through national, data-driven research.

The discussion explored the growing demand for models that help people age in place, the challenges of scaling specialist geriatric and home-based palliative care, and how collaboration, care integration, and targeted clinical interventions can improve outcomes for ageing South Australians.

Thank you to Flinders University for partnering with us on this important conversation, and to our members for contributing their insights to such a thoughtful and forward-looking discussion.

Some of the key takeaways from the event included:

• The Flinders Ageing Alliance is a centrally co-ordinated transdisciplinary research hub at Flinders University, built from the partnership of 13 large Flinders’ research teams and individual research contributions and united by a shared commitment to improving the lives of older Australians.
• The research is focused on the issues that matter most to older Australians, from health and wellbeing to quality care at home or in aged-care facilities, meaningful social connections, dementia support, and compassionate end-of-life care.
• While there will always remain a need for dedicated aged-care facilities, research shows that people overwhelmingly prefer to age in place.
• With Australia’s ageing population, demand has risen sharply for services that can effectively support older people to live independently at home. However, while many care models show positive contributions to wellbeing, there remains limited evidence of consistent success in enabling ageing in place, and more research is needed to understand and scale innovations in this area to support and enable older Australians to remain independent in their homes and communities for longer.
• With major changes coming to aged home care in Australia from November, there remains an ongoing need for integration, collaboration, knowledge-sharing and innovation across the health and aged care sector, with a focus on multidisciplinary person-centred care and comprehensive assessment and care planning.
• There is also ongoing demand for independent living, residential care and aged-care facilities that provide older Australians with choice and support as and when they needed.