The Care Commission has recently published a Report on ‘The Quality of Palliative and End of Life are in Care Homes for Adults and Older People’ which is defined as “ensuring a good quality of life for both residents and their families at every stage of a life limiting illness which can be from diagnosis onwards. One part of palliative care is care given towards the end of life, which can be the last few months, days and hours of a person’s life.
The palliative care approach is about caring for people as individuals, recognising that they may have needs which are physical, social, psychological, or spiritual, or a combination of these and it is important for this approach to be adopted by anyone in a care setting, including care homes.
FiOP welcomes this report which includes an emphasis on meeting the spiritual needs of older people and their families and we also recognise that many care staff find it difficult to elicit the spiritual care needs of residents or patients. The FiOP courses and events and the DVD that is currently being developed are aimed at providing practical and supportive ways to build the confidence of staff to enable the spiritual needs of those they care for to be met.
