ABSTRACT
This chapter offers reflections on how Hummingbird House, Queensland’s only children’s hospice, has sought to integrate Compassionate Communities and Public Health approaches into paediatric palliative care through key partnerships and community development. Set against the backdrop of a vast and decentralised state, this chapter situates this work within a decade of advocacy, collaboration, and system-level change, describing the evolution of community-centred approaches to care across great geographic areas.
It outlines the development of a Community Development Framework grounded in participatory practice and reflective praxis, presents practical examples, and illustrates how interdisciplinary collaboration has shaped key initiatives. These include building social connection, amplifying family voices, fostering grief and death literacy, and embedding community capacity-building within both hospice and healthcare settings.
This chapter reflects critically on lessons learned, challenges encountered, and the importance of sustaining meaningful relationships with families, communities, and professionals over time. It presents a radically relational, grassroots model of paediatric palliative care, one that supports families to maintain connection with their communities before, during, and after a child’s death.
Ultimately, it argues that community development should not be seen as an adjunct to clinical care, but as a vital, integrated practice essential to high-quality, compassionate paediatric palliative care.
