Her first career was nursing, having worked in dementia and aged care and then operating theatres; she is also a retired chef having run her own hospitality businesses for ten years.
Swaffer completed a Master of Science in Dementia Care with a Distionction at the University of Wollongong in 2014.
[9] Swaffer is a campaigner for human rights in aged and dementia care, for dementia to be managed as a condition causing disabilities, and for social justice for all, and still volunteers for The Big Issue, and organisation supporting the homeless in South Australia, and The Bereaved Through Suicide Support Group (SA) Incorporated.
Swaffer's more recent independent research work with Associate Professor Linda Steele from the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, the Dementia Justice Project, focuses on reparations for past, current and future human rights violations of people living in large congregate style residential aged care facilities (also referred to as long-term care, nursing homes and aged care).
Since 2010, she has given more than 1000 invited presentations in the fields of dementia and human rights, disAbility, discrimination, stigma, dementia-enabling design principles, language, Inclusive Communities, Prescribed Disengagement®,[11] Models of care, Information Technology, Advocacy and Activism, dementia policy (local, national and global) and loss and grief.