Pastoral and Bereavement Services

The Pastoral Services team offer a service which especially focuses on the human spirit − that fundamental part of ourselves which permeates our overall health and wellbeing and integrates all other physical and mental dimensions of health.

Spiritual care focuses on the aspect of what is sacred to you, this involves connecting through prayer, ritual, meditation and your relationship with the sacred, others and nature.

At Cabrini we provide pastoral, spiritual and emotional support. We care for people of all faith and no faith traditions, cultures and spiritual beliefs.

Pastoral Services offers:

• Spiritual Assessments
• Attend to spiritual needs, expressed and/ or discerned
• Empathic, active reflective listening to a person's narrative
• Assistance to the patient to elicit their own sources of hope, strength, meaning and purpose
• Assist patients to connect with their spiritual tradition and their faith based leaders
• Facilitate ritual, public/private liturgy
• Blessings
• Provision of sacraments, prayer and sacred literature
• Intentional companionship of compassionate concern
• Responding to the emotional needs of the patient, family members, primary carer and/or next of kin
• Participating in care planning through multi-disciplinary team meetings
• Pastoral practitioners liaise with and refer to other appropriate professionals to offer the best care for the patient experience

Our team of pastoral practitioners are:

• Professionally trained and qualified
• Experienced
• Available to all

The team ensure privacy and confidentiality at all times.

Grief is a response or reaction to a significant change or loss experienced emotionally, spiritually, physically and psychologically. Grief may be associated with illness, injury, loss of employment, loss of relationship, loss of independence, loss of certainty, loss of meaning and purpose, dreams and hopes, death of a significant other. Grieving is a natural and healthy response to loss, however the experience may affect you on many levels and it can be very challenging.

Bereavement is the experience that follows the death of someone who is important to you and for whom you grieve. In the months and years following a death, most people find a way forward. After a period of time they can begin to live a meaningful life once more.

The universal natural response to loss is grief:

• People grieve in their own way
• There is no timetable for grief
• Grief is a necessary process for us to go through in order to heal the wound of separation
• Grief can be complex and ongoing
• Grief may involve a range of emotions, behavioural responses: physical, psychological and spiritual

Cabrini’s bereavement and counselling programs

At Cabrini we understand grief and bereavement to be personal and that each person experiences these and processes their experience uniquely. Keeping this in mind, we have several programs available and many pathways to access them.

The program offers grief and loss support, through individual bereavement counselling sessions, support via phone and letter, invitation to a memorial service and first anniversary.

The Bereavement Support Program is available to all Cabrini inpatients, as well as their next of kin or primary carers, across Cabrini’s acute and palliative campuses. This includes patients of Cabrini’s palliative homecare and continuing care programs.

Admission to a palliative homecare program may incorporate many changes from early diagnosis to end-of-life care. Additional sources of distress for family members are the multiple losses and relationship changes that unfold as the person’s illness progresses. For all Cabrini palliative patients we offer support either at the hospital campus or in the home.

Who can make a referral and how to make a referral

Any patient, their next of kin and/or primary carer can make a self-referral by contacting the department. Ask any member of the healthcare team to make a referral for you.

Two individual bereavement counselling sessions are complimentary for the next of kin and/ or the primary carer of a deceased Cabrini patient.

Download our brochure or contact us at bereavement@cabrini.com.au

Other useful resources

Mindfulness meditation sessions

• Brighton - 12.15 pm Monday
• Prahran - 1 pm Thursday
• Malvern - 1 pm Friday

Meditation / Reflection / Prayer Resources

• Prayer leaflet (PDF 672.4KB)
• Catholic Australia prayer resource
• Spiritual Health Victoria - multi-faith resources
• Daily prayer

Christian meditation

Download a flyer - How to meditate? (PDF 24.1KB)

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Visit the Centre for Action and Contemplation website for daily meditations

For any additional resources, please contact the Pastoral and Bereavement Services department on switchboard or pastoralbereavementservices@cabrini.com.au

Sacramental services can be provided for various faith traditions. The Pastoral team coordinate Eucharist volunteers, accredited Ministers, Rabbis, Monks and other faith based leaders to service the needs of our consumers.

For Catholic patients, the Cabrini Pastoral Services Holy Communion volunteers minister the sacrament of the Eucharist to consenting Catholic patients, residents and families at all Cabrini clinical campuses.

Cabrini Catholic chaplains for each campus are resourced from local parishes where the Cabrini clinical campus resides. Their duties include provision of Sacraments e.g. Baptism, Reconciliation, End of life anointing, supportive prayer and visitation.

The Cabrini Extended Ministry Team includes a number of accredited and authorised personnel from various faith denominations and spiritual traditions. They can provide spiritual, sacramental and end of life support as consented and requested by patients, residents and /or their families. The pastoral and bereavement team can arrange support on your behalf. Pastoral practitioners connect patients to their preferred faith representatives upon request 

The Pastoral team are able to fulfil any blessing requests at any stage of a person's life and this can be arranged at the bedside.

Our Cabrini Extended Ministry Team includes but not limited to the following faith based traditions: 

• Anglican
• Jewish - Progressive and Orthodox
• Uniting – Methodist
• Presbyterian
• Buddhist
• Hindu
• Muslim
• Baptist
• Lutheran
• Greek Orthodox
• Jehovah Witnesses
• Churches of Christ