Together in Service
Compassionate in Care
Leadership in Action

Client Biography Service

A celebration of the life and worth of the palliative care client.

A three year grant from the Federal Government’s Department of Health and Aged Care enabled the appointment of a Project Officer to oversee the formation of the service. 

The biography is the client’s story told in their own words, in their own way, as recorded and assembled by a trained volunteer biographer, 'published' under EPC auspices. However, EPC’s Biography Service is about much more than simply achieving something that can be held in the hand. Its real value lies more in creating a space for personal reflection at the end of life.  

For the client, telling their story allows the client to focus on a pleasurable and productive activity that is a vehicle for thinking about life and its meanings. It lets them record memories, reflections and stories; leave tributes and messages; sift and pass on information and ideas; perhaps even heal unresolved hurts.

For the biographer, a successful outcome for their work is not necessarily a published biography, for it is the process that is paramount.

That process is very much geared to individual need, around a framework of approximately six to eight recording sessions, held wherever the client is living. From the transcripts (checked with the client) and perhaps additional non-text material, the biographer crafts and fine-tunes a biography, working with EPC support staff for on-going case supervision and assistance with layout, printing/copying and binding. The final document then goes to the client and/or family as two print copies and a CD.