The Launch of the INELDA Doula Approach
by Douglas Simpson
"We are committed to ensuring that dying people and their circle of care have autonomy and self-determination in their death."
Over 15 months ago, a group of INELDA educators and staff came together to explore what was working and what wasn’t in our end-of-life doula training. We knew the changes we wanted to see, and others shared the changes they wanted us to make. The field of death doulas has grown exponentially since we were founded, and the 2015 environment we were born into is radically different from where we are today.
In this short time, we have witnessed a global pandemic, a countrywide call to address institutionalized racism, rural and urban hospital closures, a shortage of health care workers, an increase in telehealth, and a growing movement toward death awareness. We have learned from you, others in our field, and the voices of the people we have supported. All of these factors and more have driven our organization to evolve and adapt.
As we near the decade anniversary of INELDA, we are excited to share that this September we launched our new approach. This three-pronged process moves away from the linear model that many of you may have been taught, as confronting death and our end of life is nonlinear. We now start from the premise that death is expressed differently throughout the world, as we are all multicultural, hybrid beings. We recognize the vast wisdom that each learner brings to the environment.
As the role of the doula evolves and medical care systems continue to integrate the support we offer, awareness of how death is impacted by larger structures of oppression is required. Deathcare delivered by doulas is often portrayed as looking a certain way, and the concept of a “good death” is often experienced by only a few. This assumption about what end of life entails adversely affects access to end-of-life care, safety, and recognition of personal autonomy. We are adapting to address this unjust deathcare system and seek to offer doula support no matter how and where one dies.
As nonmedical companions, doulas have the opportunity to provide holistic support encompassing emotional, physical, educational, and practical care to anyone, in any environment, who agrees to their care. And we all know that dying looks many different ways. No matter if your support shows up in a hospice, during war, on the street, after a suicide, or in the dying person’s ideal setting, our approach prepares you to provide doula care. Our new approach will become the guiding lens for all future curriculum offers created internally, collaboratively, and in partnerships. This offers learners a model of care that can be built upon.
How We Do This
INELDA provides collective learning spaces to allow you room to grow personally and consider your own mortality. At same time, we teach new doulas a reiterative process of how to provide doula support utilizing methods that they can deploy based on the needs of the dying person and their circle of care.
We are backed by a deeply invested team whose vast experiences offer many different insights and unique experiences with end of life and death. INELDA’s new approach will be delivered by both educators who have been with the organization for years as well as others who have recently joined, carrying invaluable knowledge and experiences with them. The skills they carry span experience as full-spectrum doulas, nurses, chaplains, educators, social workers, and more.
Our training will prepare doulas to move receptively into their communities to provide person-specific care at the end of life and act as advocates for death awareness. We committed to putting our curriculum through multiple lenses as we were creating, but we are also dedicated to continuing this reflection as we implement. We invite you to learn more about the INELDA doula approach in our upcoming Discovery Calls. Our new director of education, Omni Kitts Ferrara, will walk participants through our new offering.
In the spirit of our doula approach that applies wherever anyone lands, we want to remind our community that we are committed to lowering barriers of access to our end-of-life doula training. We are committed to continuing to offer our education at an accessible rate and to exploring additional payment structure models. As always, our scholarship program is integrated into each training we offer, and alternative ways to process payment through a payment plan are available.
For those thousands that have trained previously with INELDA, we invite you back to take this training for just $225 plus any tier membership. We are offering this because we are so invested in ensuring the autonomy of the dying person, and their circle of care voice is eminent in the care doulas deliver. Reach out to us to learn more on how to benefit from this opportunity.
Our new doula approach was reimagined for doulas to leave our trainings feeling confident and well equipped to provide doula care, as well as knowing where to access ongoing support through INELDA as they continue to develop as doulas. We are dedicated to supporting doulas to deliver care that recognizes that dying people and their circle of care have autonomy and self-determination in their death.