Hilary O’Connell is Principal Advisor for Healthy Ageing and Reablement at iLA and an occupational therapist with more than 40 years’ experience as a clinician, manager, and sector leader across disability, aged care, and community services.
For over two decades, Hilary has been at the forefront of advancing preventative and reablement focused approaches to community care. She played a pivotal role in establishing, operationalising, and managing Australia’s first community-based home care reablement service, helping to embed reablement as a core practice in aged care service delivery.
Hilary has presented extensively at national and international forums on healthy ageing and reablement and has co authored peer reviewed papers on reablement and falls prevention. She is also a proud co author of the highly regarded book Reablement in Long Term Care for Older People and co leads the Australian arm of the International ReAble Network.
At iLA, Hilary has spearheaded the development of LiveUp and Keep Able, two nationally recognised digital platforms designed to support healthy ageing and enable reablement informed practice.
Hilary is deeply committed to empowering people to live lives they value, advocating independence, dignity, and participation as fundamental human rights.