Industry’s national guidelines for pastoral care

Pastoral and Spiritual Care of Older People (PASCOP), Spiritual Health Victoria (SHV) and the National Ageing Research Institute (NARI) were granted the funding for the pastoral care project which will provide about $400,000 to ensure that, reportedly for the first time in Australia, there will be a national standard to inform best practice spiritual care in aged care settings – residential, community, home based – at a time of an increasingly ageing population and when there is strong and growing evidence of the value of spiritual care.

“The World Health Organisation views spirituality as inextricably linked to quality of life,” says Dave Petty, PASCOP chief executive.

“And there is now a large body of emerging evidence showing that spiritual care is an essential part of holistic care for everyone, particularly older people, including, importantly, those with dementia,” he adds.

According to Mr Petty, there are many organisations already undertaking impressive work in delivering high quality pastoral and spiritual care. The guidelines will provide guidance and support for other organisations to do the same.

SHV chief executive, Cheryl Holmes, says spirituality is not just about religion and faith, rather, it is about what gives people a purpose to their lives.

“Spirituality is the way people seek and express meaning and purpose; the way they experience a connection to themselves, to others and to the world. The need for spiritual care is often at its greatest when people are facing huge transitions in their lives,” Ms Holmes says.

“The ageing process is one of life’s major transitions. There are many working in aged care who understand the value of spiritual care but feel ill-equipped to deal with or talk about spirituality. They want to have the conversations but tend to stay at a superficial level because they don’t feel they have the knowledge or skills to respond at a deeper level,” she says.

The intention of the guidelines is to guide best practice in the provision of spiritual care and to build the confidence of the aged health workforce to deliver that care.

The project is a partnership between PASCOP and SHV, with NARI responsible for project management. It will be delivered over four phases: stakeholder engagement to ensure the guidelines are relevant and aligned with need; literature review to assess all the available evidence; wide ranging consultation; and development and piloting of draft guidelines prior to finalisation.

Completion of the project and delivery of the final guidelines will occur in June 2016.