August 8: New dementia resources

The topic of this week’s programme is caring for loved ones with dementia, with a particular focus on how to maintain some kind of spiritual life. Lin Ball talks to David Blair, who cared for his wife Valerie who had dementia. David describes the difficulties of caring for someone fulltime, the frustrations over communication and coping with her changing moods. He says he often felt guilt, anger or loneliness. One particular loss he felt very keenly was the decline in their spiritual life together – not just going to home group or Sunday services, but praying and reading the Bible together. He found it hard to find any resources that would help him appropriately.

Tricia Williams, an editor with Scripture Union, describes the Being with God project. There are 820,000 people with dementia in the UK. Her interest in serving their needs for an ongoing experience of prayer and Bible reading led to the development of three booklets – Words of Peace, Words of Hope, Words of Faith – which not only provide simple Bible readings and prayers but also each come with a free CD of well-known hymns, which can help people with dementia to recapture some of their own experiences of knowing God.

Pam Rhodes, well-known presenter of the BBC’s ‘Songs of Praise’, is promoting the new booklets. She describes how powerful she feels old hymns and choruses are in helping people with dementia to reminisce about their faith.

August 15: Torch gardening holiday

Lin Ball travels to the Torch Holiday & Retreat Centre at Hurstpierpoint near Brighton to speak to people with sight loss taking part in the annual gardening holiday. She finds them on the terrace on a bleak and blowy afternoon, planting out troughs and hanging baskets under the guidance of Holiday Leader Gail Millar. Lin speaks to a number of the guests about what the holiday means to them and about how they enjoy gardening despite their sight loss. Gail describes some of the other projects going on at the holiday centre, particularly the creation of a sensory garden.

Lin also speaks to Peter and Kate Mancey, long-time friends of Torch and regular visitors to Hurstpierpoint where they provide spiritual input for the holidays during a number of weeks each year. Kate herself has sight loss.  

August 22: Enabling Church

Marilyn Baker talks with Nick Cook, minister of Market Harborough Baptist Church, about ways to make church life accessible to people with disabilities. Marilyn asks Nick is there’s anything in the Bible to help us understand the issues. Nick explains how difficult it can be to interpret the relevant Bible passages, for example those which use physical blindness as a metaphor for spiritual blindness.

Nick describes how, because Torch Trust is in the town, he came to serve a church which already had some visually impaired people in the congregation. He inherited a culture where the congregation was already actively integrating the blind members. He determined that blindness or other disabilities should not be barriers to any church activities, within reason. He explains how a blind person was voted onto the diaconate and how that had some positive effects on the way the church runs.

The programme gives details about a conference called Enabling Church being run by Churches for All and Premier Christian Radio and taking place in October. Nick will be one of the speakers.