Working with communities to develop resilience in end of life and bereavement care: Hospices, schools and health promoting palliative care

This paper discusses research undertaken to explore and develop practice between a hospice and two primary schools. Action research was used to increase understanding about current practice in, and with, schools and to explore, implement and evaluate models of practice. Seven practice innovations were identified that are in various stages of being piloted. These innovations can be understood as health promoting palliative care activities, as defined by Kellehear (2005), due to the process in which they were designed and their focus on developing the capacity of communities to respond to death, dying and bereavement. They demonstrate the diverse role that hospices, can play in developing how communities experience death, dying and bereavement and propose that a broader lens is employed to understand and facilitate end of life and bereavement services.