Accessibility: The Heart of a Caregiver-Friendly Faith Community

If you want your church, temple, mosque or faith center be a safe, supportive place for caregivers, it has to be accessible and welcoming for those they care for as well. Here are four areas where your organization can make great strides in increasing accessibility.

1.Make your facility accessible.

Don’t expect caregivers to attend if they can’t easily bring their disabled family members into your building, or if they can’t help them privately in the bathroom when they’re on site.

Religious entities may be exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act requirement for accessibility, but local building codes that require accessible facilities still apply. Additionally, ignoring accessibility sends an unfortunate and powerful message about who is welcome there (or not). As a bonus, nearly everyone can benefit from accessibility: disabled individuals using wheelchairs, elderly people who are hard of hearing, parents with strollers, people with temporary injuries, etc.

At a bare minimum, remove barriers to entry and make your facility accessible. This includes accessible parking and ramps at entrances. Bathrooms need to be wheelchair accessible, complete with wider doors, grab bars, and accessible sinks and toilets.

You can take physical accessibility much further, to show how you value all people being able to fully participate:

• Add an adult-sized changing tables and family bathrooms.
• Does your campus have a playground? If so, consider making your playground more accessible by adding ramps, transfer stations, and surfaces that work with wheelchairs and mobility aids. Include elements that are made for people of any size to use.
• Create a separate, quiet space or sensory room for people who need a break from stimulation.
• Do you offer assistive listening devices or sign language interpreters?
• Is it possible for someone in a wheelchair to access your stage or altar?

This list is only a small start on making your facility as accessible as it can be. Consult with organizations that specialize in accessibility to get started and ensure your accommodations are meaningful to disabled individuals and their families.

2. Train staff and volunteers on how to help caregiving families.

One of the advantages of having a supportive faith community is to help share the responsibilities of caregiving with others, if only for a short period of time. Attending religious services is one avenue caregivers might use to seek some much-needed respite. If they are expected to continue all of the 1:1 caregiving tasks here too, it may simply be too overwhelming to make the effort to attend at all.

Provide training for staff and/or volunteers so they can confidently and safely provide support. By assuming some of the caregiving tasks during services or programs, your staff is offering caregivers the opportunity to focus on their own spiritual needs for a while, which is an essential component of personal health and wellbeing.

There are many resources available to facilitate this training, and educational materials on how to serve families impacted by disability. Here are a few to get you started:

• Joni & Friends
• Ability Ministry
• Key Ministry
• Ability Tree

3. Offer inclusive programming.

Every individual’s and family’s situation is unique, and they have different preferences for how you accommodate their needs when it comes to inclusive programming.

Some families value having a dedicated disability ministry and specific programming that can accommodate their unique needs. Others prefer to be included, with the appropriate accommodations, in the standard programming. Consider how you can come alongside families on an individualized basis to provide the right kind of programming and support.

4. Offer virtual options.

Caregiving life is often unpredictable and exhausting. There are a million reasons why a caregiver and their family might not be able to make it out the door and into your events. Having a virtual option for services and other programming will allow them to still tend to their spiritual needs and feel included and connected, even if they can’t be there in person.