Stefanie Plage

Dying with Dignity

This ethnographically informed DECRA project aims to produce knowledge to improve end-of-life care for people experiencing homelessness.

Using Brisbane’s interlinked housing, health and social care sectors as a case study, the research aims to identify: (1) barriers to dying with dignity on the system (e.g., funding priorities or place-based clinical guidelines), interpersonal (e.g., care encounters) and individual level (e.g., psychosocial issues); and (2) opportunities to effectively support people without a home in dying well.

The DECRA project will:

• reconceptualise and visualise the ‘the good death’ in the context of homelessness;
• move beyond place-centric approaches to death and dying;
• redefine end-of-life care as enacted collectively spanning individual, interpersonal and system levels;
• foster dialogue between people experiencing homelessness, civil society, and government by employing participant-produced photography to promote shared understandings of good end-of-life care.

People who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander are over-represented among people experiencing homelessness and using specialist housing support services. Understanding their experiences at the end of life is of great significance to promote better care for the dying overall within Australian health and social care systems.

For this reason, the DECRA project will include a nested study to develop research questions in consultation with Indigenous communities and implement a research design to address these questions. You will lead this nested study as your PhD project.