From our CEO: Running through Mud
You are almost there, at least for this year. No doubt there were times when you weren’t sure you would make it. Working in aged care provides a constant opportunity to exercise your leadership, your resilience and your persistence. In 2020 the path diverted away from the tangled scrub of business as usual and out into a new, unfamiliar landscape full of mud. Tangled scrub is difficult, and complex, but this mud – this was something else.
Things that usually worked required twice the effort, and exhaustion levels were even higher. Yet here you are. You are coming out the other side to the next landscape. Here at Meaningful Ageing Australia we are deeply grateful for your willingness to keep showing up, to keep asking the hard questions about how to best understand and meet the needs of the whole person your organisation exists to support.
Keep building up the muscles of your spiritual strength, in whatever way is best for you. Perhaps this is through creative expression, honest conversation, prayer, meditation, reflective practice or time in nature. Memorise and revisit the spaces of welcome and replenishment in your life. If there are none, find some. We need you for the long haul.
In advocacy news, this month we submitted our response to the Counsel Assisting’s Recommendations to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. We emphasised the importance of access to holistic support for every person engaged with aged care services, the role of spiritual wellbeing in mental health and the importance of full quality of life.
We were proud to launch Meet Akira at our AGM last week. There are many pieces to the puzzle that completes the picture of holistic care. Another one of these is consistent assignment, also part of the National Guidelines for Spiritual Care in Aged Care. Leading expert Daniella Greenwood led a webinar on this important topic for us this month and has contributed our guest article, below.
This is our final newsletter for 2020 – our office is open until 23 December and then we take a break, back on 11 January. I trust you will get some rest also, even as the world continues to change around us.
The issue also includes:
- Guest Article: Consistent Staff Assignment to Support Self-Determination by Daniella Greenwood
- Launch of The Map of Meaning and Ageing: a self-reflection guide
- Meet Akira launched
Read the full issue here.