VAD in Residential Aged Care Homes

A national report card

Go Gentle Australia and the Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) are proud to have launched the first Voluntary Assisted Dying in Residential Aged Care Homes national report card at the Ageing Australia National Conference 2025 on 30 September 2025.

Read the report

This report finds that, despite VAD being legal in every state and the ACT, the majority of Australia’s residential aged care providers are yet to give VAD the same support and visibility as other end-of-life choices.

85 per cent of residential aged care providers do not offer VAD access to their residents, or do not offer any public information about VAD.

This means terminally ill older residents and their families can find out too late that they are required to move elsewhere if they wish to access VAD.

The report aims to encourage transparency and improve the quality of VAD information so that older Australians can make informed choices about their care.

Alongside best practice examples, the report contains resources and a VAD information template to support residential aged care providers to make improvements to the current information they provide.

Read or download the report	VAD info template for aged care providers

Read Go Gentle's blog post - Residential Aged Care homes failing older Australians on end-of-life choice

In the media

• The Senior - The information many residential aged care providers don't tell you (30 Sept 2025)
• Aged Health - Report covering almost 70% of residential aged care has "disturbing" results for VAD (1 Oct 2025)
• Aged Care Insite - Residential aged care needs to get honest about voluntary assisted dying (2 Oct 2025)
• Inside Ageing - Report finds most aged care homes failing on voluntary assisted dying access (2 Oct 2025)
• ABC Sydney Mornings - radio interview with Go Gentle's Policy & Advocacy manager Frankie Bennett [listen from 1:52 mark] (3 Oct 2025)