Faith communities’ role in the pastoral support of children with life-threatening and/or life limiting conditions: A pastoral study

Abstract

With a life-threatening and/or life-limiting condition, a child is confronted with unknown hospital environments and treatments, as well as with dealing with the illness or condition affecting their body. Without formal pastoral support systems, the child is often left seeking spiritual support from their direct family. The illness produces uncertainty and often fear in the child and their family. Pastoral support available to these children is often limited to church volunteers. There is a lack of pastoral care due to funding constraints, while healthcare workers and faith communities lack the necessary training to care for these children. By implication, there is no full-time pastoral support available to these children and their families. It was hypothesised that there is limited pastoral support available to these children. The pastoral study set out to determine what pastoral support is available to children with life-threatening and/or life limiting conditions. The study also aimed to use the pastoral strategies identified by the four pastoral caregivers in the empirical study, along with the other chapters, to create a pastoral strategy to inform faith communities and pastoral caregivers to provide more effective pastoral care to these children. Therefore, a synthesis of the findings of all the phases of the practical theological interpretation process is given.