INELDA GRANT FUNDS HUMANE PRISON HOSPICE PROJECT IN CALIFORNIA PRISONS
INELDA has partnered with Human Prison Hospice Project (Humane) to further Humane’s work to bring end-of-life care training inside prison walls. The grant, $20,000 in total, will help support the education of incarcerated individuals to provide care for their fellow inmates at the end of life in California, a state where 936 people died in prison in 2020, the most recent year for which the state’s department of justice has published statistics. The program is underway at San Quentin State Prison for men. Following the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) decision to appoint Dr. Michele DiTomas as chief executive for palliative care within its system, Humane will launch a palliative and hospice care model at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, CA later this year. Most corrections facilities do not provide the benefits of hospice care to inmates dying in prison and compassionate release to die outside prison walls can take several months and is not always an option. As the number of elderly U.S. citizens surges, so will our prison populations, making the need for these programs even stronger.
Humane’s work aims to ensure that those dying in prison receive compassionate end-of-life care. INELDA strives to make dignified death accessible to all individuals, regardless of circumstances. The collaboration between INELDA and Humane demonstrates the synergies between the two organizations’ missions.
The San Quentin end-of-life care training is a prototypical model wherein specially selected inmates volunteer to be educated in the compassionate care of hospice work for those with fatal illnesses, despite there being no physical hospice at the prison. The Chowchilla program will expand this model with additional training in direct care, in preparation for the establishment of a hospice program there. Through these prototypes, protocols for a robust inmate palliative/hospice care training program can be established, for replication at additional corrections facilities in California, with a long-term goal for statewide implementation. Through positive project outcomes, the two organizations seek to produce the awareness, evidence, and processes needed to effect policy change that codifies humane hospice care requirements for prisons.
“Serving those behind bars while working with the dying is a core component of Humane’s purpose. Through INELDA’s support, we can make death with dignity and humanity a reality inside prison walls and prevent those incarcerated from dying alone and without compassion,” Humane’s executive director Lisa Deal said.
INELDA Director of Special Programs Kris Kington-Barker will play a collaborative role in educating inmate volunteers. As the project grows, more INELDA-trained doulas will become involved in educating future inmate volunteers, helping INELDA fulfill one of its key goals – to connect doulas to end-of-life work.
Prison volunteers selected to participate in the training will have undergone rigorous vetting to ensure they are respected by their peers and the prison administration. The Human Prison Hospice Project gives volunteers an opportunity to channel the goodness that exists in every human in a meaningful way.
“This partnership brings us closer to our vision to eradicate inequities in end-of-life care. Those who are paying their debt to society in corrections facilities deserve compassion at death, and our partnership with Humane is a meaningful way to advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves,” said Douglas Simpson, CEO of INELDA.
Humane is currently screening volunteers from the prison population in San Quentin. Training is expected to begin in summer of 2022 and the program is anticipated to be underway soon thereafter. The pilot at CCWF will launch in the third quarter of 2022.
ABOUT HUMANE PRISON HOSPICE PROJECT
Humane Prison Hospice Project works to transform the way prisoners die through education, advocacy, and training and supporting prisoners as end-of-life caregivers and grief companions. Humane has been working in San Quentin since 2017, training prisoners how to provide compassionate end-of-life care, provide peer support during times of crisis, and grief companionship, and advocating for the development of a prison-based hospice. In 2022, Humane has partnered with the Chief of Palliative Care within the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) and AMEND, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) based organization that works to transform prison culture. Through this collaboration, Humane is developing a robust hospice training for prison peer supporters that will be piloted at the Central California Women’s Prison (CCWF) in the Fall of 2022 with plans to replicate in other California Prisons in the coming years. The California-based non-profit is fiscally sponsored by Commonweal, through which it has 501(c)3 status.
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