For the elderly, spiritual health is an important aspect of providing quality care. In an aged care setting, spiritual needs are also catered for to promote holistic health and maintain an individual’s identity. As a Catholic organisation, we understand the role religion and spirituality plays in the lives of others when it comes to personal identity, especially for those with higher care needs like individuals in palliative care.
Spiritual health and wellbeing is a significant part of providing care as it helps individuals to:
• Reduce stress
• Find inner peace
• Transcend pain and suffering
• Discover meaning & purpose
• Maintain Identity
Meaningful Ageing Australia (https://meaningfulageing.org.au) segments spiritual care into five areas:
- Organisational leadership and alignment – Embedding and practising spiritual care at all levels through the organisation
- Relationship and connectedness – Providing care in the context of mutual, respectful and genuine relationships
- Identifying and meeting spiritual needs – Recognising choices, preferences and needs of older people, to be identified, documented and shared by the care team
- Ethical context of spiritual care – Ethical framework to ensure spiritual care is offered in a way that respects and upholds the rights of older people
- Enabling spiritual expression – Individualised activities and interventions to encourage the finding of meaning, purpose, connectedness and hope.
Both seeking and expressing spirituality your way is highly important as at all stages of life as it’s the core of who we are. Scalabrini’s mission is to provide high quality and meaningful aged care, which includes accommodating for all spiritual and religious needs. We have religious sisters who live onsite at all of our villages who are available to provide pastoral care to assist in improving the quality of life of our residents through spiritual care.
If you have any questions about how Scalabrini accommodates spiritual health for our residents, please don’t hesitate to call our friendly staff today at 1800 722 522 or enquire by email at enquiries@scalabrini.com.au
