The Truacanta Project held three online workshops for anyone looking to build on or interested in finding out more about compassionate communities work and work around death, dying and bereavement in Scotland.
These interactive workshops aimed to bring together like-minded people to hear from speakers, share their own successes and challenges, and create personal actions to take away.
The presentations from each event, slides and discussion notes are available below.
In the past six months, we have all had to adapt to a virtual world, and are now facing the reality that this may be the way we work for some time yet. But how do we bring sensitive work around death, dying, loss and care into an online space? What have we learned and how are we moving forward?
We heard from Michelle Donoghue, Peer Recovery Development Worker with Dundee Voluntary Action, about her experience of bringing peer recovery work online, and how that's informing the work of the Dundee Truacanta project Say Something Dundee; and from Morag MacLean from Macmillan Cancer Support, who coordinates a national Digital Storytelling project – a joint venture between Macmillan and Scottish Book Trust. The project was originally intended to be done on a face to face basis, but when restrictions came into place in March, they were faced with the challenge of creating suitable space online.
Presentations:
Why take a community development approach? What are the benefits and challenges of doing so? What have we learned over the last few month?
We heard from Carly Attridge, founder of The Loss Project who previously worked on the Compassionate Neighbours programme at St Joseph's Hospice in London, about her learnings around community development; and Emma Oram, from the Truacanta Perthshire community, about how taking a community development approach to compassionate community activity led to their successful Selfie Wings project.
Presentations:
What do we mean when we talk about inclusivity and accessibility? Why is it important? What are the barriers different people face, and how can we work towards removing them?
We heard from Mark Jackson, Policy Manager for Marie Curie in England, about the findings and recommendations from their Hiding who I am report into end of life care for LGBT+ people; and from Tina Yu, from Sense Scotland and board member of the Scottish Minority Ethnic Women’s Network, about using inclusive communication and approaches to engage with different marginalised groups including people with communication support needs and BAME communities.
