Spiritual care for people with dementia in care homes

A project funded by the Life Changes Trust

Purpose

The overall purpose of our two- year project is 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 will seek to address is: ‘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.
2. 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 consists of a purposeful six-step process to which participants are introduced in a two- day workshop.