Maitland Volunteers for Palliative Care are ready to help Maitland people open up about a tough subject – death.
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Coordinator Judith Robinson says statistics show it isn’t spoken about enough so the group will hold a free Dying to Know Day on August 8 at East Maitland Bowling Club between 1pm and 3pm.
The day will see people sit in groups and brainstorm what is important to them when they think about what they want for their end of life support and death.
“The idea of it is to start conversations around end of life care and support and being more comfortable I suppose around talking about dying and death,” she said.
“They talk about what matters to them and from that they will get the opportunity to work out what is important to them, if they haven’t already, and take it to those who are important in their lives and let them know about it.
“It could be that someone in their family has a chronic illness, so if that illness is going to progress to more high dependency care, what are we going to do about it and have we thought about what kind of care they might need in the future.”
Ms Robinson said starting the conversation was a positive step.
“Sixty per cent of us think that we don’t talk about it enough and we certainly know a lot of people aren’t comfortable about talking about dying,” she said,
“With palliative care as a service that’s been here for 26 years, I thought let’s start that conversation for our community in a non-confrontational way.”
Phone 49366582 to register for the event and reserve your seat.