As a patient or carer, you may find that illness and caring are reducing your engagement with friends, neighbours, and social activities. Your illness may also leave you feeling vulnerable. Your family may not live close by, and the local neighbourhood may have changed. Transport may have become more difficult. As a result, you may feel isolated and lonely.

Social networks can contribute to your sense of wellbeing. Meeting, sharing, and learning with others can help develop a sense of purpose and community. You can explore opportunities to connect with others in the community. Council groups, community centres and libraries can also provide different groups and activities. SA Community hosts a Directory of Community Services that can connect you with services and community organisations.

Local palliative care services often have a volunteer service which can offer social support to you as a patient and /or carer. The Aged Care Volunteer Visitors Scheme connects volunteers and older people to provide friendship and companionship.

People often become aware of palliative care through a close encounter with death. You may have had a partner or parent die. You may have cared for someone with a life limiting illness at home until they died or been a regular visitor to an aged care facility. Volunteering with the palliative care service, connecting with Compassionate Communities or offering to help the aged care service can be a way to share what they have learned with others who are now facing end of life. Palliative Care SA encourages people to become a volunteer and support SA families and communities by joining their Volunteer Village.

Some volunteers may not have had a palliative care experience but are simply active in their local community and are looking for ways to contribute. There are many ways people can offer help in their community. Most people will contact the palliative care or aged care service to ask about helping. Others may contact their local council or Volunteering Australia.

Compassionate communities can be seen as naturally occurring networks of support in neighbourhoods and communities, surrounding those experiencing death, dying, caregiving, loss, and bereavement. They support people at end of life and their families in many ways and the shape of these communities is determined locally by the people involved. There is growing interest in this approach to support and care and provides a mechanism for local people to get involved and make a difference.

Palliative Care SA is running a compassionate communities project. The City of Tea Tree Gully has resources developed from their compassionate communities project. The Onkaparinga Compassionate Communities Collaborative is a project of Healthy Cities Onkaparinga and Southern Vales Compassionate Communities.