Deadline: 3-Oct-22
Healthcare Excellence Canada (HEC) and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (the Partnership) invite you to join as HEC creates measurable improvement in access to palliative approaches to care for people experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing through the Improving Equity in Access to Palliative Care Collaborative.
The Improving Equity in Access to Palliative Care collaborative will help communities design, deliver, and evaluate programs and initiatives that provide palliative approaches to care with and for people experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing. Communities at all stages of the improvement journey are welcome, including those planning an initiative, those implementing an initiative, and those with sustained results that are looking to reach more people.
Models developed in Canada for individuals experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing are widely regarded in the palliative care community and literature as leading and innovative practices. Innovative aspects of these models include:
- Using a strengths-based approach
- Co-developing services with people with lived and living experience
- Providing care where people are (including in shelters or on the street)
- Creating cross-sector partnerships to sustainably funded services
- Involving people’s family (including chosen family) and communities in care and support
- Using trauma-informed approaches for palliative care
- Addressing barriers to accessing mainstream palliative approaches to care
Funding Information
- The Improving Equity in Access to Palliative Care collaborative will provide a total of up to $2,000,000 in implementation seed funding shared across up to 20 communities across Canada.
Benefits
- Receive funding of up to $100,000 per community over four years for eligible personnel, travel, equipment, and supplies and services expenses. The amount of funding granted will be based on demonstrated needs as identified via a budget proposal (see Appendix A for a list of eligible and ineligible expenses).
- Participate in interactive, dynamic learning and implementation support opportunities using an “all teach, all learn” approach, including learning through discussions with peers and experts about local, regional and national challenges; educational opportunities endorsed by trusted sources and streamlined content tailored to address relevant topics.
- Receive measurement and evaluation supports to create evaluation plans and processes to evaluate palliative approaches to care over the long-term, based on the needs and preferences of people with lived and living experience and other community partners.
- Receive implementation and capacity-building supports to help communities at varying stages of palliative care program development:
- Engage with individuals with lived and living experience, caregivers, providers and community members and organizations to identify local priorities and codesign responsive program models and evaluation approaches.
- Leverage existing education to provide palliative care education for volunteers, shelter workers, community support workers, individuals experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing and others including clinical staff.
- Implement new or expand existing palliative care supports and programs that can be sustained after the seed funding period ends.
- Access capacity-building opportunities to create and support meaningful partnerships with people with lived experience – patients, caregivers, and communities, including First Nations, Inuit and Métis.
- Learn and share within a pan-Canadian collaborative network to promote strategies and policies across sites, with a focus on sharing solutions to challenges and factors that support long-term success (such as policies and leadership support).
- Guide and inform the development of resources to support communities who would like to improve access to palliative approaches to care for individuals experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing.
Eligibility Criteria
Communities or individual organizations are eligible to apply. A community is defined as a group in a province, territory or region that is working together to improve access to palliative approaches to care for people experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing (such as a social program, shelter, community health centre, hospice, organizations, etc.).
Applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria to apply.
- Eligible communities/organizations include regional health authorities, communities and organizations responsible for the delivery and/or funding of palliative care supports and programs or those that deliver supports for individuals experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing.
- A lead organization will be identified by the applicant. This could include a single organization, program, team or a community consisting of a group/network of organizations.
- The lead organization will commit to:
- Sign a collaboration agreement outlining requirements around funding and distribution of funds, data sharing, intellectual property, audits and records and confidentiality.
- Participants will commit to:
- Partner with communities and those with lived and living experience to co-design evaluation and implementation plans that reflect needs and preferences of those who stand to benefit from the program.
- Plan, implement and evaluate equitable, safe, quality palliative approaches to care to meet individual and community needs.
- Improve experiences and outcomes for patients and providers.
- Participate in online learning events with the other participating teams and subject matter experts to share goals, strategies, challenges, and results associated with engaging their communities to advance palliative approaches to care for people experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing.
- Participate in the design of resources to support the implementation of palliative approaches to care for populations experiencing homelessness or vulnerable housing.
- Work with HEC and the Partnership to identify goals, needs, and other information to help design tailored program supports; create an implementation and evaluation plan; complete progress reporting as required, including a final report outlining results of an evaluation that will include some common measures (to be determined in partnership with teams after entry to the program).
- Participate in the collection and reporting of common measures.
- Complete regular reporting including funding expenditure reporting (twice yearly.
For more information, visit https://www.healthcareexcellence.ca/en/what-we-do/all-programs/improving-equity-in-access-to-palliative-care/