Category: Spiritual Care Matters

Today's task Top tip: This is a good opportunity for a small group discussion. Ask your support contact to facilitate this. Task One: Arrange to meet up for about 10 minutes with someone else who is doing this course or as a small group, maybe during a coffee break. We would like you to reflect on you learning from the week. Use the following questions to share your experiences: Share your spiritual moments or experiences from the week. What do you understand spiritual care to mean for residents and their families? What are the important things that staff can do to support the spiritual needs of older people and what skills do they need? Task Two: Feedback Answer the following questions in the comments section. You should aim to spend…

  Today's Task Top tip: Ask a resident that you already have a good relationship with to help you in this task. Task One: Having a meaningful conversation You should aim to spend about 20 minutes on this task. Choose an activity that fits best with your role and the residents that you have contact with. Use this activity as the setting for having a meaningful conversation. Here are some examples but you may have a better one. The point here is that often conversations are easier and more meaningful when they are combined with an activity that already happens. Here are some examples to choose from: Walking and talking –go for a walk with a resident and have a meaningful conversation. Tea and chat – have a meaningful conversation…

Play Today's Audio [powerpress] You can read the transcript if you prefer. Today’s Task Top tip: Finding out is like being a detective and involves talking to people who you think will know the answers. Task One: Find out about … For today’s task we want you to do a bit of detective work. After hearing in our podcast about the importance of core values such as love, respect and dignity, we would like you to find out about the core values of your care home. To do this you should arrange to have a short discussion with your supervisor or team leader or the care home manager or the chaplain if there is one attached to your care home. Ask them about the following: What are the core values of the…

Play Today's Audio [powerpress] You can read the transcript if you prefer. Today's Task Top tip: Try some active listening during a short conversation with one of the residents to see how you get on. Task One Use a moment during your day to practice your listening. Our task for today is all about active listening. We would like you to use a moment when you are having a conversation with a resident. As you are listening try to be more aware of how you are listening. Did you have eye contact? What was your body language – open, smiling, relaxed? How approachable were you? Were you active listening or were you a bit distracted? Task Two Answer the following questions in the comments section. You should aim to spend…

  Play Today's Audio [powerpress] You can also read the transcript if you prefer. Download the Course Diary Before we start, I'd like to offer you a printed version of each day's activities. This comes in the form of our course diary. Download the diary if you'd like to print a hard copy of the tasks, so that you can follow along and fill it out each day. We've got a PDF and a Word doc, depending on what you'd prefer. FIOP Course Diary PDF | FIOP Course Diary Word Doc Today's Tasks Top tip: Listen to the Audio Podcast – it includes examples to help you know what to look out for. Task One: As you go about your work today look around you to spot evidence that spiritual care is…

This is a really quick intro to the Spiritual Care Matters course. In the next few minutes, I’ll give you an idea what it’s about and whether it could help you in your own work. If so, I’ll even tell you how to sign up, so you can start learning right away. So, what’s the course about? Spiritual Care Matters is an online learning course. It’s an introduction to spiritual care, exploring how it is defined, what it means in practice and why it matters. The course is for staff and volunteers working with older people. That might be in a care home, a health centre or really any setting in which you’re caring for older people. So if you’re a care assistant, a member of health care staff, a…