Recent Activities

Spiritual Care for Older People in Residential CareIn the Autumn, and before the snow came, we ran three Day Workshops in the North of Scotland in Inverness, Skye and Aberdeen. The intention was to offer residential care home staff the opportunity to take a day to think through some of the issues around ageing and spirituality and the implications of this for spiritual care for older people. We were delighted with the response to our invitation. The workshops were intended to accommodate only 12 people – in two of the three cases we were bursting at the seams. However it was good to see such an interest in the topic. The day consisted of three parts. We thought about our own ageing and what that might mean in terms of our understanding of the ageing of others. We considered the challenges of working in residential care and the pressures on time and energies for the staff. We also thought about what “successful” ageing might look like. In the afternoon we thought about the spiritual care of older people using an exercise called cards on the table. This allowed the group to share ideas and develop their thinking around the priorities and practicalities of spiritual care. We finished by looking at a model of spiritual care that has been developed by a group of healthcare chaplains and researchers working in the North of Scotland. This is now written up and about to be published in the Scottish Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy.  Making Sense of Later Life This was well attended and appreciated. “Affirming, relaxed, participative” “Life Stories, poetry and storytelling as an integral part of our work”“Creativity never fades. Everyone has something joyful to offer. A moment of your time is all that’s required to makes someone’s day.” “The variety of people’s experiences, which if known may help to plan their care or help with communication, in a nursing situation. The Stories We Live byFiOP was especially pleased that Rosas Mitchell and Chris Wilkins offered a day entitled ‘The Stories We Live by’ in Edinburgh in September.During the day Rosas helped us to explore life story work (the importance of listening to people’s stories) and working out how to record them in creative ways to make sure that they could be used to produce good times in later years.Chris gave us the background to the Caring Memories programme. This helps people create a life book with personal photographs explaining why capturing and sharing our life memories helps us to define who we are and enables communicating so much more about ourselves than might first meet the eye. More information can be obtained from www.caringmemories.net.FiOP has been very active in the last three months working with congregations in the Lothians, the Borders and Fife on topics as diverse as ‘Keeping the Spirit Alive’, ‘Why do we visit’ and seasonal topics including All Saints, All Souls, and Remembrance.In responding to demand over the past few years we have developed a broad range of topics on which we can run workshops, seminars or conferences. Please see our website for further details and we would be delighted to discuss developing a course which meets the requirements of your group or organisation.Examples include:  Spiritual Tasks of Ageing  Communicating with People with Dementia  Spiritual Care in Care Settings  Worshipping with people with Dementia  Chronic Pain and Spiritual WellbeingOver the next few months we will be happy to offer materials or workshops on the seasonal topics of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Candlemas and Lent.Click here for the Working in New Areas report.

www.faithinolderpeople.org.uk

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A study by the University of Surrey to investigate some of the 'lifestyle secrets' to living a long and healthy life. Click here to download more information.

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A new lecture by Malcolm Goldsmith is available.

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The Annual Report for 2008/09 can now be downloaded.

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