Pastoral and Spiritual Care of Older People (PASCOP), the national peak body for spiritual care and ageing, is hosting a ‘meaningful ageing’ seminar for aged care workers and volunteers in Brisbane.
The half-day event in April will explore different approaches to ensuring older people age meaningfully.
Dr Judy McCrow, a clinical practice development facilitator and senior chaplain Wayne Crouch for Churches of Christ in Queensland, will discuss how the organisation developed a high quality dementia-specific church service.
“We saw a disconnection for people living with dementia when they attended regular church services. Their attendance did not appear to evoke emotional and spiritual connections to the service or others around them,” he said.
As a consequence, the organisation developed a weekly dementia-specific service for people with dementia living in aged care.
Ilsa Hampton, CEO of PASCOP, led the development of an aged care provider’s award-winning community aged care volunteer spiritual care visitor program, aimed at improving care for residents and their families.
“Staff and families appreciate someone from outside the care setting spending time with their loved one but as with most things with great potential, we needed to work with care getting it right,” she said.
Some of the challenges included recruitment of the right volunteers, evaluation, integration and making volunteering a rewarding experience for both volunteers and the older person.
Blue Care’s director of mission, Heather Allison will present on the topic of responding to existential crisis in older people.
Plans are underway for a Melbourne seminar mid-year.
The Brisbane seminar takes place 28 April.
For more information or to register visit the PASCOP website
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