Spiritual care for people with intellectual and developmental disability: an exploratory study

Background: A faith-based (pseudonym, Adam’s House-AH) and a non-faith based care service (pseudonym, Greenleaves-GL) were explored to find out if and how spiritual support was provided for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

Method: Six months were spent volunteering within each service and a mixed-methods approach was utilised including applied and ethnographic methods to explore and describe if and how spirituality was embedded within the two services.

Results: Themes found included community of value; homely functional care; and barriers to spiritual care. GL staff tended to provide what we termed “religious spiritual care” whilst AH staff administered both “religious” and “non-religious spiritual” based support. This difference may be related to the type of training found only at AH which included spiritual dimensions.

Conclusion: Services could benefit from acknowledging the importance and significance of spiritual care training and education for effective and varied spiritual care for people with IDD who desire such support.