This was a new venture for FiOP in partnership with the Festival of Spirituality, Edinburgh Interfaith Association and St John’s Church and enabled us to begin to consider issues around spiritual care and ageing in relation to other faiths. The style of the event provided an opportunity for different perspectives to be offered and for people to be involved in several discussions in small groups around a table and to write their thoughts on the table cloth for the next group to see.Our table hosts included representatives from the Sikh community; Care Commission; NHS Chaplaincy; City of Edinburgh; the Scottish Dementia Working Group and members from the Christian community.
The key issues which emerged included the importance of the oral tradition, of storytelling; respect for the individual and their culture and traditions. This included the value of stillness and silence and not feeling that you had to be seen to be ‘doing’ all the time. People with dementia still retain an emotional memory of encounters with people even if they have no conscious memory so that it is still possible to develop a relationship with them through touch, singing, smell and familiar rituals. To achieve these things care services needed to be responsive and to have a greater understanding of the role of spiritual care and different faiths.
FiOP hopes to continue to explore ageing in an interfaith context in the coming months.
