During the past decade, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has been an important entre for Hospice of Santa Barbara into the Latino community.
This traditional Latin American celebration honors the dead by creating colorful altars where offerings such as bread, sugar skulls, figurines, candles, incense, yellow marigolds and photos are placed. Offerings are often very personal, such as photographs of the deceased and their favorite food items, beverages and flowers.
Many human service organizations in Santa Barbara face challenges when attempting to reach the Spanish-speaking/Latino population.
With this in mind, Hospice of Santa Barbara reached out to the Parish Nurse community, which was critical to our linking with local Catholic churches. We were invited into some of the larger churches with significant populations of Latinos and Spanish speakers, such as Our Lady of Sorrows and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Parish Nurses helped us communicate to the congregation about our free services for the dying and for the bereaved. We built Dia de los Muertos altars alongside parishioners at their churches.
Over the years, we’ve built a strong relationship with Latinos/Spanish speakers by being present in their communities and sharing our Hospice of Santa Barbara information in Spanish language publications and over the Spanish-speaking airways.
Today, I am proud to say that Hospice of Santa Barbara’s Hispanic Family Services offers a full and extensive range of services: free counseling for adults and children, care management for families in which a member is facing a life-threatening illness, and support groups and education to help Spanish-speaking adults, teens and children cope with the death of a loved one. Hospice of Santa Barbara now has five full-time Spanish-speaking employees, including clinical director Gabriela Dodson. As a result, in the first eight months of 2011, Hospice of Santa Barbara had 133 new clients enter our Spanish-speaking programs, including 61 children.
Since our founding 37 years ago, our goal has been to serve all the children, teenagers and families of our community with free, compassionate and practical care. Over the years we have strived to make that an increasing reality among all people. I am proud to say that we are now able to offer Spanish-speaking families our full range of services. We are already seeing the profound difference this is making in the lives of more and more families.
Not only have we embraced the Latino cultural approaches to dying and grieving the death a loved one, but more importantly and profoundly, we have learned a great deal.
— Steve Jacobsen is executive director of Hospice of Santa Barbara. Call Hospice of Santa Barbara at 805.563.8820 for a schedule of adult and children’s groups, or to make a donation. Connect with Hospice of Santa Barbara on Facebook.
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