Spiritual Care for People with Disabilities

Please note that this webinar was presented from a chaplain working in the Christian tradition, with commentary and potential interventions that assume a Christian population being provided spiritual care. The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab stands firmly on its principles — including All Are Welcome and We Respect Differences — and so we encourage viewers to consider how they might adapt Christian-specific approaches from this webinar for a variety of contexts which are non-Christian, non-spiritual, non-religious. We also acknowledge that the video clip towards the end, arguing for the necessity of Christian belief for personal worth, would not be appropriate outside of very specific contexts in which the chaplain and the person being served have the same, pre-discussed theological beliefs. *** This webinar will educate, empower and equip chaplains to provide spiritual care to people with disabilities (PWD) without inherent bias. First, our guest, Rev. Dr. Jackee Jackson, will discuss how chaplains can acquire effective language to communicate with people with disabilities by using person and identity first language. In addition, chaplains will learn about what Rev. Dr. Jackson calls the “Ten Commandments of Disability and Sensitivity.” Second, this webinar will help chaplains become empowered and see themselves akin to midwives in this area of spiritual care, offering their skilled, compassionate and supportive presence to PWD and their families. Third, by equipping chaplains with language that removes attitudinal barriers that exist in society, the webinar will help transform the ways in which chaplains interact with PWD in their words and actions. Chaplains will learn the unique ways that language, communication and attitude matters when providing emotional and spiritual care to people with disabilities. We will be joined by: Rev. Dr. Jackee Jackson, Chaplain, JFK Medical Center, Edison, NJ *** Rev. Dr. Jackson has provided three resources that may be useful for chaplains serving people with disabilities: Jackee Jackson, “Identity First Language” Jackee Jackson, “The ‘Ten Commandments‘ of Etiquette for Communicating with People with Disabilities” Kathie Snow, “A Few Words about People First Language“ *** We thank Interfaith America for their support for this webinar. Learn more at InterfaithAmerica.org.

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.