Previous Conferences
Notes from Margaret Allan Lecture on 23rd March 2010 by Dr. Ewan Kelly
There was an encouraging turnout of SAPCC contacts and also students to hear Dr. Ewan Kelly, and many expressed their appreciation of what he had to say. He interspersed his talk with times for questions and discussion, and used many illustrations both from his own experience and from poetry.
The title of his lecture was ‘The Gifted self’. He spoke of the ability to wait with others attentively, of being creative, and of the importance of wisdom, resilience, and humour. Some people have natural gifts, but they still need to reflect and to be open to learning. The motivation for listening could be described as nosy-ness, or love. Attentive listening needs to be non-judgemental, reverential. It requires the ability to discern the difference between the voices from within, and those from without, about whose hurt is being felt.
Waiting is counter cultural today! Doctors tend to fix, chaplains to wait, supportively, sometimes in mutual helplessness! This waiting is active, attending to what is said, not said, and what comes in other ways. It is creative, and requires time.
There is a need to discern ‘when the path turns’, and when it is right to follow it. This requires practical wisdom which is both a gift from God, and comes from experience. It is about waiting for the ‘ah-ha’ moment which gives significant meaning.
Listeners require to practise resilience...Jesus believed that His efforts made a difference; He attended to His own spiritual life, and kept going through adversity. The gift of light-heartedness is also important. Laughter is close to tears, and both bring release.
2009 'STORY-TELLING AND RITUAL IN BEREAVEMENT'
Dr. Ewan Kelly - first impressions after the conference
I thoroughly enjoyed being involved in the conference in Linlithgow. Folks engaged enthusiasticly with the issues raised and very open to
share their own insights, experiences and points of view. All of this within a relaxed, friendly and supportive context! This made the day for
me as a speaker. Many thanks for the invite!
Some questions raised by conference members after group work
Particularly difficult death situations:
Bereaved parents after a baby had died in utero - especially the father
Suicide
Who am I and what do I bring?
Do I take time out? What are our key beliefs about life after death?
What for me makes life worth living?
How do we feel about: our bodies? our body image? our physical identity? our wounded self?
We are beloved – beloved son – beloved child
Helpful rituals
Lighting a candle which stays alight at the end of a visit
Creation of stories to help bereaved person create a biography of the one s/he has lost. This can help when the person who died suffered from dementia. It can also help a bereaved person begin to learn to talk of the person in the past tense. Sharing of stories can be a point of reconciliation e.g. a grandchild’s good memories may heal a son’s bad memories.
Photograph album of places the bereaved person knows (the local church, the town/ village, people, events), to help with reconnection to everyday life. Grief often needs to be shared even if the event was a long time ago.
Resources:
Roger Mc Gough’s poem: Let me die a young man’s death, in Selected Poems (Penguin 2006)
Ewan Kelly: Meaningful Funerals
2008 'Pastoral Care: Dealing with Dementia'
Report on the 2008 conference on pastoral care for people with dementia
The conference this year was held at St. Matthew’s Church Halls in Perth and
had an attendance of 63 people interested in working with people with dementia
from a pastoral perspective.
After an
insightful meditation which introduced us into the context of people living
with dementia, the morning session started, led by Malcolm Smith, an ordained minister for over forty six years, who,
for almost twenty years has developed a special interest in people with
dementia.
He spoke in a very warm tone from his
experience of making pastoral visitations at home for people with dementia and continued
in the same lines with the meditation, explaining what it is like to have
dementia: “It is a bit like being in a play and having learnt the lines but
where everyone else is in a different play and so you are not getting the
cues. You feel that you do not belong
and your memory and what you thought you knew lets you down.”
He also
defined dementia as a blanket term describing specific illnesses and stressed
the most common factors associated with dementia but who do not necessarily
mean that the person has dementia: memory loss, depression, wandering
aimlessly, challenging behavior (for us to understand). When visiting a person
at home it can be difficult to know if they are suffering form dementia and we
must be careful about labeling.
He concluded his session with a reference to the
spiritual needs of dementia sufferers and stressed their need to feel loved and
accepted, to have a sense of mystery of life, to be at peace with themselves
and others and to have resources to live positively and creatively just like
the rest of us. It is good to list
poetry, readings, music, hymns etc that a person would like to hear when they cannot
speak. We need to have sensitivity to
what feeds a person and so it may be possible to develop a family scrapbook or
travel pictures: we do not need to use words to share a person’s being. We also do not need to fill every moment with
talk but just be alongside someone i.e. being there for them and with them.
Dementia
erodes consciousness, memory, and our physical being. With dementia we are trying to rediscover a
new humanity and helping a person to live creatively in fragmentation and we
are agents of transformation to help a person escape the confines of
illness. We may feel inadequate and
vulnerable in working with dementia sufferers but it is rewarding and we can share
our own poverty. When we offer our
smallness there is likelihood that an encounter can take place.
After the AGM meeting at lunch the second session started,
led by Elspeth Mcpheat, a deaconess
of the Church of Scotland who is a unit manager of a specialist dementia unit
run by Cross Reach and has worked with people with dementia for about twenty
years.
She spoke about the
challenges and difficulties met when visiting people with dementia in care
homes and made very practical suggestions on how to assist communication with
people with dementia in a care setting by minimizing distractions and competing
noises (like the TV, radio or other people’s conversations), by making sure we
have good eye contact and their full attention before speaking, by using
gestures or touch if appropriate, displaying a caring but not patronizing
attitude, by keeping our sentences short and simple and presenting one idea at
a time and allowing plenty of time for what we are saying to be understood.
Each of these was exemplified from her rich experience of working with people with
dementia and the presentation was very attractive as the speaker was an
excellent communicator herself.
The last part of the session was dedicated to cuing faith
memory in people with dementia and again she spoke from her experience of
leading worship for people with dementia, stressing the importance of spending
time before worship speaking to people, telling them who we are and what is
going to happen, using what is relevant to the persons tradition, using
familiar readings and hymns, using things from nature (flowers, stones etc.),
using pictures or objects to help illustrate what we’re saying. From her
experience, however, the Holy Communion seems to be the most powerful faith
memory cue of all.
The session was ended with a time for questions and answers
and we discussed about the importance of continuing to visit even after
the visitor is not recognized, since any good experience physically speaking,
raises the endorphin level which stays with people for some time after, even if
the visit itself is forgotten or denied. In the end both speakers were very much appreciated for the rich
experiences they brought to everyone’s attention.
Written by Ligia Manastireanu, SAPCC council member and Christine Furnish, conference attendant
I am a member of SAPCC & attended their Annual
Conference with a good deal of interest because of the subject. I understand that the majority of the 6o plus
people attending were pastoral care visitors, & 2 were trainee ministers.
The two speakers were Malcolm Goldsmith & Elspeth McPheat. We were led into their input by a beautiful sensitive meditation of music & readings from two of the SAPCC Council. This enhanced the tone & approach of both speakers most effectively.
Malcolm spoke with a mixture of hard facts about the dementias, the actual changes in the brain etc & his profound empathic understanding & sensitivity towards those living with the condition. We were invited to use our imaginations for a few minutes in order to have a glimpse into the experience of dementia, remembering our life, maybe 20 years ago & then finding ourselves in a world where all memory of the intervening years had gone. Malcolm emphasized the continuing possibilities of communicating with people with dementia. Words being slow & simple, but also that we do not always need to use words. Being alongside the person, nourishing their senses with flowers, music, poetry, & being willing to just be in silence with them. Encounter happens in ways we don’t always understand.
Following lunch, Elspeth McPheat spoke of her work as Unit Manager for a Church of Scotland Cross Reach Home, St Margaret’s, Polmont. This is home for 36 people with dementia. Elspeth shared with humour & insight, her experiences of living with, caring for & constantly working to understand, people with dementia. She made many practical suggestions for visitors to care homes, making no bones about how hard it can be sometimes! Two tv sets tuned to different channels in a home’s sitting room was one example of making any kind of communication pretty hard going. Asking to be taken to a quiet space in the home, or to the resident’s room should always be possible. Worshiping with people with dementia was an important part of her input.
Elspeth talked about cuing faith memory in people. Using familiar objects associated with worship, flowers, a bible, pictures etc. taking account of people’s tradition. Taking time, explaining who you are. She had found, however, that the Eucharist was the most profound ‘cue’ of all, even for those who appear to have advanced dementia & may have lost language altogether.
The Conference finished with time for questions. Malcolm had had to leave early, so I was asked to join Elspeth for this last few minutes. I had the opportunity to tell the Conference more about FIOP. I had taken some leaflets & newsletters with me & after lunch they had all been taken! So there had already been a good deal of interest. I also took the opportunity to pick up on Malcolm’s point about understanding that the dementias are a physical illness with specific changes in the brain. It seemed helpful to emphasise the physiological changes in the brain produced by a visitor spending time being really ‘with’ the person. Even when there seems to have been no recognition or communication. Endorphins & other neurotransmitters will have been stimulated in the brain, & can result in the person feeling calm & happier maybe for many hours after the visit, even though they have no memory of anyone being with them.
This was an enjoyable & useful day, & was obviously greatly appreciated by everyone who attended.
Written by Penny Grieve
2007 'Tongues and Ears' - Listening and Responding in Pastoral Encounters
Speaker: Rev. Ian Walker
Ian’s interest in the use of counselling skills in Pastoral Care
started when he worked in a mining town in Zambia’s Copperbelt. There
were no counselling or psychiatric services available, and people
turned to the Church and the minister with problems never discussed in
Theological Colleges. On returning to a parish in Scotland he undertook training in couple
counselling and spent a number of years working with Lothian Couple
Counselling and using the skills he had gathered in his parish work. He took up a post at St Colm’s College, later to become Scottish
Churches Open College, and for 18 years taught courses in pastoral
studies to full-time students, many training for the Diaconate, and to
distance learning students through the T.L.S. scheme. For his closing years in ministry he returned to parish work in Rutherglen, and retired from there in April of this year.
2006 Freeing the Spirit in All Our Encounters
2005 Reflective Practice
2004 Out of the Shadows: Paths amid Marginalization, Alienation, Discrimination
Thoughts
Have you ever been marginalized,
left to feel worthless in other’s eyes?
made to feel valueless, different, unwanted
for your age, accent or disability taunted.
Did you feel nothing about you was right,
went home to weep, night after night?
Did the ‘labels’ folk marked you with,
set you apart,
melted your confidence, wounded your heart.
Did other folk judge you, finding you wanting?
So to make themselves feel good,
continued the taunting.
Words can inflict wounds, much deeper than blows
being rejected is worse than all those.
Alienation… is a wilderness bare,
Other’s unkindness has put you there;
perhaps your own family, simply because
they can’t understand the path that you chose.
They lack the compassion, the wisdom to see,
God sets many pathways, for you and for me.
Their way may not be the one, their family take,
so they should affirm you in the choices you make.
God gave us each free will, but we go astray
take the wrong path, that doesn’t mean they
should simply dismiss us as arrogant ‘no-hopers’,
We learn from our errors, with God’s help,
become ‘copers’.
Or is Discrimination the load that you bear,
For in so many guises it’s lurking out there.
We are so quick to judge point the finger, or say
words, hurtful words that would to this day.
If you were to blatantly, show discrimination,
you could be arrested, it’s ‘not on’ in our nation;
Officially that is – but so many folk know
the wrong color or address can soon make it show!
They won’t get the chance to heave themselves out
the pit of despair, for society shouts
“We are all equal, Europe says so”
Yet still, in our Churches, congregations know,
undercurrents exist which will discriminate,
reject or ignore folk, sometimes there’s hate.
God made us all, created in love
so what right do they have to do the above?
Jesus loved sinners, prostitutes, and the fallen
embraced and encouraged them, but
not by calling them, different or bad,
but by showing the way
through love they could change,
Can’t we do that today…? G 2004
2003 Echo Journeys: Dealing with Difference
"Reflections on the SAPCC Conference November 2003"
At the end of the conference participants were asked to offer a response to the question 'What insight, learning, observation or question do you wish to share with the SAPCC council as a result of your participation in this year's conference'
The fact that fifteen participants responded, all positively, marks the success of the conference, the value of the theme and the appreciation of our speaker, Jean Morrison, and of her style of participative teaching.
Nearly all commented on the value of the concepts of the 'Echo Journey' and the 'shadow' as valuable tools to aid them in personal reflection and in their work. Some of these were very specific (e.g. one comment on the way that the content of the conference tied in with learning from other courses and one person, embarking on training as a supervisor, reflected on the value of the material as a resource for supervision) others were more general.
Six respondents valued the model of experiential learning offered by Jean and found her style of relating and teaching helpful. One respondent singled out the use of a personal pastoral situation which we went back to and reflected on in each session particularly helpful.
One interesting question asked was about how a 'Theorist' might respond to the 'hands on' experiential style of the sessions. Perhaps the question was answered by two other participants, one who commented on the helpful technical issues and one who commented on the movement between theology and practice in the conference. Perhaps each person was able to take from this conference what he or she needed at the time and may need to reflect long on the material offered in total.
Although only one person made a direct reference to the environment of the conference a number noted appreciation of - 'the liturgy', 'being welcomed and yet being allowed space', 'the value of meeting and sharing insights with others who had the same concerns and interests'. It feels that the environment, in terms of the accommodation, the way room was set out and the general atmosphere, was a help in maximising the value of the conference.
The only criticism was that we needed more time. Needless to say that is a comment that we could all agree with and it is one that brings joy to the hearts of any organising committee. When people go away wanting more it is always a reflection on the success of what was offered!
Another pleasing thing for the committee members was the credit given to SAPCC for organising this conference and especially for the comment which they would heartily endorse 'Sign up for SAPCC membership - well worth it!
In summary, this was a good conference with a theme that resonated with the participants. The hard work that Jean put in to her presentations bore fruit and people went away with new insights and a new way for self reflection.
Perhaps one respondent summed up what we all felt:
'The journey continues and the fruit of this part may take some time to fully develop'.
2002 Power - Force of Oppression or Energy for Creation
2001 Pastoral Care and Chronic Illness
7th European Conference on Pastoral Care
The 7th European Conference on Pastoral Care and Counselling met in the Czech Republic in August 2001. The Pre-Conference, held in Prague from 3rd to 6th August, was an opportunity for participants to meet in small groups, to find out about issues such as the relationship between Czechs and Jews, work the Church is doing with refugees, and pastoral care and counselling in theological education.
The main part of the conference began on Monday 6th August, in the Spa town of Janske Lazne, in the eastern Krkonose Mountains, near the Czech Republic's border with Poland. Chaplains, Clinical Pastoral education supervisors, teachers of pastoral care, and councillos from countries as far apart as Norway and Romania, the Ukraine and Italy gathered for discussion, worship and sharing ideas and experiences.
2000 Pastoral Care and Worship
1999 Healthy Boundaries, Healthy Practice
1998 Competence for Caring
1997 A Code of Practice for Pastoral Care
1996 Skilful Supervision in the Pastoral Context
1995 Mission Statement
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