Living Well
Lifestyle & wellbeing consultancy
Drawing on my extensive experience in lifestyle work within aged care, along with my teaching background and PhD research in palliative care, I offer individual services tailored to those in residential aged care or living at home to enhance wellbeing and help people continue to live meaningful and engaged lives. Sustaining a meaningful and fulfilling life, regardless of living situation or changes in ability or cognition, is of paramount importance for our wellbeing. However, despite the best efforts of many individual staff in aged care, too often there is a gap in providing truly personalised wellbeing care due to constraints such as limited resources, time, and staff expertise in what resources or services are available or creativity in adapting to individual needs. When lifestyle needs are not met, it may lead to boredom, communication issues and a decrease in overall wellbeing. Through individual lifestyle/wellbeing care planning, I hope to help address some of these unmet needs and help people live a meaningful life, whatever that looks like for them.
I work closely with the client and their preferred support team to identify individual unmet-needs and interests, while taking into consideration available resources and accessibility needs, to create a personalised lifestyle/wellbeing plan. This may mean looking back to past interests that the client is feels they are no longer engaged with and seeing if they can be reestablished, or looking for new ones. It may mean working on a few areas of life and interests, or focusing on an individual aspect (for example, sourcing the required tools and setting up a plan for learning a new skill, finding relevant communication aids, or helping you connect in with a local community group and working out the logistics). Each plan is customised and could include finding helpful communication aids, choosing and sourcing items to establish appropriate activities for the client to participate in the home, to providing information about community activities. I take a holistic approach to meeting unmet wellbeing needs, and I aim to help enhance any area of life outside of medical care (and any specialised services).
Given the individual nature of this process, the aims of the process will be discussed in the initial appointment along with the number of sessions and research I will provide. Ongoing support will be individually negotiated.
About Dr Karly Edgar PhD
With more than a decade of teaching and activity facilitation experience, and over eight years experience in lifestyle in aged care, and a PhD focusing on palliative care, combined with a creative background I bring a unique blend of expertise to my work. Whether teaching, conducting research, or facilitating activities or retreats, my goal is to empower individuals to live meaningful lives and to enhance their overall wellbeing.
After completing a Bachelor of Creative Arts in theatre and a MACP focusing on art and spirituality, I began teaching and coordinating a creative arts stream in a tertiary institution in their Bachelor of Arts. I followed this by completing a Cert IV in Leisure and Health and moved into working in residential aged care in lifestyle roles. Working in aged care led to the opportunity to do a PhD in life storytelling in palliative care. My teaching and facilitation experience is varied, with topics from drama, to art and spirituality, to spiritual disciplines and lifestyle in aged care and from certificate to masters level as well as workshops and retreats.
I bring a creative and holistic perspective and person-centred approach to what it means to live well and flourish.