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Faith in Older People

Faith in Older People

Enabling a better understanding of the importance of the spiritual dimension to the well-being of older people

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You are here: Home / Explore our work / Dementia Care and Faith Communities / Spiritual care for people with dementia in care homes

Spiritual care for people with dementia in care homes

You are here: Home / Explore our work / Dementia Care and Faith Communities / Spiritual care for people with dementia in care homes

A project funded by the Life Changes Trust

Lottery funded - Big Lottery Fund
Life changes trust

The overall purpose of our two- year project was to improve the quality of life for people living with dementia who are living in care homes – by increasing our understanding of the role of spirituality, faith, and religion in their lives, and by encouraging the provision of an environment that actively works to lift the spirits of those with dementia and their relatives. For the purposes of this project, we propose to use the definition of spiritual care used by NHS Education for Scotland.

‘Spiritual Care is person centred care which seeks to help people (re)discover hope, resilience and inner strength in times of illness, injury, transition and loss.’

The main question the project sought to address was: ‘what needs to be done to ensure that residential care provision in Scotland takes seriously issues of spirituality, faith, and religion?’.

The project has two strands:

  1. A mapping exercise exploring and describing the key ways in which residential care providers are currently delivering spiritual care to people living with dementia. This will highlight pointers for policy development, education and training, and professional practice.

This resulted in the Report:

De-mystifying spiritual care (Jan 2018)Download

“We need to de-mystify the word ‘spiritual’. People say ‘Oh I don’t believe in this’, but it’s a broader and wider thing.”

Care home manager
  1. A practical initiative focused on recognising and meeting the spiritual needs of people with advanced dementia. This is an area of spiritual care that is recognised as needing development. The initiative will be aimed at care facilities and will be based on ‘The Purple Bicycle Project’. The use of the Purple Bicycle approach has been agreed by Professor Swinton and Dr Mowat, the creators of the process. The project is running concurrently with the mapping exercise. In this way, the overall project will have theoretical, policy and practical outcomes.

The Purple Bicycle

This is a person- centred spiritual care resource which gives the person with dementia, carers, relatives, and friends an opportunity to review and sustain relationships that are meaningful and sincere. It brings together caring practices that are often found individually within organisations that care for older people. Its unique contribution is that these practices are presented as a linked and coherent expression of care and concern for the spiritual lives of people with dementia. The project consisted of a purposeful six-step process to which participants are introduced in a two- day workshop.

Spiritual Care for People with Dementia in Care HomesDownload
Close up of forget me notes in sunlight

The challenge for older people is to make sense of life at a stage when loss and change occur more frequently and perhaps more painfully.

Malcolm Goldsmith, founder of Faith in Older People

Contact

Tel: 0131 346 7981
Email: info@fiop.org.uk

21a Grosvenor Crescent
Edinburgh
EH12 5EL

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Faith in Older People is a registered company SC 322915. Limited by guarantee with charitable status.
Registered Charity No. SC038225. Registered Address: 21a Grosvenor Crescent, Edinburgh EH12 5EL

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