End of Life Impact Network

What if all Australians and their loved ones had better end of life experiences: dying peacefully, connected, life in order, in a place of their choosing and free of pain?

Our Impact Network seeks to achieve just that.

What is the End of Life Impact Network?

The concept at the heart of the End of Life Impact Network is to connect people and support them to create change in new and different ways. Practically speaking, this looks like:

  • Strengthening interconnectedness and alignment

  • Seeing and acting with the wisdom of many perspectives

  • Organising in ways that don’t reinforce business-as-usual

  • Working with conflicting views in generative ways. 

These network activities create trusting relationships, fertile soil for new ideas, opportunities for independent and collaborative action and a legitimate platform to influence broader change.

Why the End of Life Impact Network?

Often considered morbid or taboo, death and dying are not popular topics. As a society, Australia sweeps conversations about death under the rug, leading to a raft of unfortunate, often preventable, experiences for people and their loved ones at the end of their lives.

The definition and measurement of what a good outcomes means at the end of life is not agreed across the health system. Across the stakeholders we’ve been on this journey alongside, we’ve heard that a good outcome in death and dying comprises the following key elements:

A diagram describing the concept of 'a good death'

Change-makers with a focus on death and dying from across Australia have been contributing their resources, knowledge and passion to this impact network for over three years, and now with the continuing support of The Wicking Trust, their important vision for change is supported until 2027.

How the network works

The End of Life Impact Network connects the existing work and activities of change makers and innovators in the EoL system, and produces ideas and projects to test and learn about what creates systems impact. 

We do that by:

  • Building relationships and trust between previously siloed areas of the EoL system

  • Aligning around shared mission and purpose

  • Mapping the system from where each member stands and identifying leverage points to shift conditions that perpetuate problems.

  • Lifting out of business as usual to see the bigger picture

  • Creating partnerships that lead to action

  • Measuring the efficacy of Impact Network practices as an approach for creating systems change

 

This initiative was our first exploration of the Impact Network approach as an enabler of systems change, and has now been adopted as a key enabler in our broader strategy.

Networks and systems are one and the same thing: collections of formal and informal relationships that produce intended and unintended outcomes.

The rationale behind the network approach to systems change is that a dynamic moving system, full of emergence, needs a dynamic moving ecosystem of independent (therefore supporting a diversity of needs) but aligned responders working to create a holistic set of benefits.

What we’ve learnt

Our original aim was to seed a national collaboration for systems level impact in end of life care and services, and to build coalitions of stakeholders with the capability to create shifts in parts of the system.

What we’ve observed, achieved and learned in our four years of convening has influenced the formation of four additional networks in TACSI’s portfolio of systems change work. We've seen networked ways of working together adopted as fundamental ways of operating at TACSI, both as an organisation and in our interactions with our partners at all levels.Insert text here

 
Illustration of a person that has had an idea

Our impact (so far)

  • Alignment with members on death literacy focus, while building systems impact and social innovation capabilities

  • 40+ members at all levels from core to periphery

  • Collective systems mapping to identify leverage points

  • Creation of an ideas portfolio to accelerate learning, connection and adaptation

  • Six active hubs (working groups that emerge focused on the jobs to be done) have formed:

    1. Knowing / doing gap

    2. End of life game

    3. Brand hub

    4. Network learning hub (cross network — joining up members between TACSI’s networks and beyond)

    5. Network sustainability hub

    6. Network Evaluation

  • Innovation fund established to support prototypes with participatory decision-making and granting

  • Five end of life conversation starter game prototypes developed and tested by the network

  • Game publisher and distributor partnership formed 

  • Active collaboration between network members and their own initiatives (a number of examples if required)

  • Co-designed network strategy for 2022 and beyond

  • Five years further investment from The Wicking Trust, building on a three year initial investment

Our commitment to First Nations First

Through our regular network convenings, we’re building a culture of deep and individualised Acknowledgement of Country. We pay respect to the traditional owners of all of the lands upon which we meet through sharing stories, language and personal reflections.

We understand the cultural significance of the cycles of Life and Death across all cultures that are woven into our stories, our lives and rituals around death and dying, grief and loss. We respect the wisdom of our First Nations Peoples and their cultural ways of knowing and being. 

There is a significant commitment across Network members to develop Reconciliation Actions within their own organisations and sphere of influence.

Read more

Meet the End of Life team

If you’d like to learn more or get involved, we’d love to hear from you

Get in touch
We're social
Get in touch

ADELAIDE
Level 1, 279 Flinders St
Adelaide SA 5000

SYDNEY
1/145 Redfern Street

Redfern NSW 2016

Subscribe to our newsletter
Be the first to hear about TACSI events, resources, our big ideas, and new projects.
© 2024 TACSI
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and Owners of the lands in which we work and live on across Australia. We pay our respects to Elders of the past, present and emerging. We are committed to collaboration that furthers self-determination and creates a better future for all. Please note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this website may contain images, voices or names of deceased persons in photographs, film, audio recordings or printed material.
At TACSI, diversity and inclusion is more than a statement; equality and accessibility are guiding principles embedded in everything we do. We strongly believe that it’s the collective sum of all our communities differences, life experiences, and knowledge that enables both ourselves and our partners to come together to tackle complex social issues. That’s why we’re committed to having a diverse team made up of people with diverse skills from all backgrounds, including First Nations peoples, LGBTIQ+, mature-age people, and people with visible and non-visible disabilities, regardless of sex, sexuality or gender identity.