ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the project 'Caring community in living and dying' in the Tyrolean community Landeck. The project aims to strengthen networks and solidarity in the community in order to support older people in everyday life and family caregivers, furthermore to improve the local relationship between formal and informal caregivers in end-of-life care. The existential situation of family carers has described in various expressions as the collapse of a world. The project follows community-based participatory research and a community development approach. The chapter represents a model of good practice for community-oriented end-of-life care in German-speaking Europe. It reviews impact on prospective hospice and palliative care developments towards strengthening social space and community-oriented care practice and policy, that is 'public care' for frail, critically ill and dying people and their loved ones. The compassionate community is an expression of shared values and fundamental ethical attitudes, such as empathy, mindfulness, attentiveness, respect and solidarity in human coexistence.
