News

Palliative Care NSW and the Volunteer Support Services Programme is pleased to bring another workshop to the Central West of NSW.

2020 has been a difficult year for everyone. Covid 19 has challenged society and individuals in ways we might never have predicted. There are many new learnings to be gleaned from the experiences of the past year or so. This year, Kate Englebrecht  is offering volunteers an opportunity to reflect on what has been happening for people over the past year and offers insights relevant to the care we bring to others who face their own mortality every day. Volunteers have an extraordinary capacity for, and awareness of, both realities and possibilities. We are potentially people who can see the real and the true clearly. These past 12 months have offered us a fresh opportunity to think again about what our role caring for those at end of life entails. In light of the insights gleaned after a year or so of life-threatening pandemic, we might look again at how we care, what we do, and why we choose to do it.

Kate asks us to consider, with her, what it means to be people who are able to sit with what is happening and live in a truly authentic way that reflects the dignity of what it means to be as fully human as we can be.  Working in palliative care draws us to be both thorough realists and hope-filled visionaries. We can embrace the real and the true and allow ourselves to be transformed through it.

We are not ‘optimists’, we’re not ‘positive thinkers’ who are always convinced that things turn out well. Rather, we live with the conviction that things can make at least a little sense regardless of how they turn out. Hope can remain coherent in the presence of failure and disappointment, pleasure and loss, friendship and loneliness, and hope can stand firm in the face of a threatening future.

Please join Kate as she leads us through in conversation after a year of challenges and changes that impact on what we do and how we do it.

Kate is excited to bring this new workshop to the area as a kind of sequel to her earlier presentation on Spirituality, Reflective Practice, and Palliative Care although those who missed the first session will not be disadvantaged.

This workshop is aimed at palliative care volunteers and their managers, nurses, clinicians, allied health workers, and anyone interested in end of life care.

WHEN: Friday 18 June

TIME: 10am – 12pm

WHERE: Bushmans Motor Inn, 9 – 13 Peakhill Rd, Parkes

COST: FREE but RSVPs are essential and places are limited

RSVP: Please email Kate Bowman at [email protected]

Please click here to download the flyer.