Curtin University is leading an international collaboration with Silver Chain Hospice Care to implement a comprehensive Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) that will formally assess carers’ needs in supporting their loved ones to die in their place of choice, usually at home.

 

The project is a joint effort between Curtin University, Manchester University in the UK and the University of Victoria in Canada. It is part of the international collaboration on Family Caregiving Research in End of Life Care between Australia, UK and Canada. The CSNAT was developed by the UK team.

 

Home-based family care at end-of-life involves significant emotional, social, financial and physical costs and without significant support, potential caregivers may seek costly institutional forms of care.

 

Although government policies highlight that family carer support needs should be assessed and addressed, this approach is compromised by the lack of rigorously tested and comprehensive assessment tools for use by service providers, which are brief enough to be practical for application in busy clinical settings.

 

Professor Samar Aoun from the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute’s WA Centre for Cancer and Palliative Care said that timely response to carer needs would save money and restore dignity to end-of-life care, as palliative care is about caring for both the patient and the family carer through early identification, assessment and management of physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs.

 

The group partnered with Silver Chain Hospice Care to trial a simple questionnaire for assessing carers’ physical, social and emotional needs throughout the process of caring.

 

The trial will continue for three years, with 440 carers as a study group and controls.

 

“We’re hoping with this tool we can demonstrate an improvement in carers’ wellbeing, bereavement outcomes and the likelihood of the patient achieving their preferred place of death,” Professor Aoun said.