Can advance care planning (ACP) be a relational healing place for indigenous homeless people in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Abstract

In this autoethnographic article, we explore one Māori person’s experience of engaging with advance care planning (ACP) while experiencing the distinct relational fracture as expressed into indigenous homelessness. We describe how ACP, envisioned as a relational space, and expressive of Māori holistic care and wellbeing, might be conducive in healing past traumatic experiences and restoring familial relationships and connections. Extending ACP beyond that for which it has been originally conceived for housed populations and by Western health models, may offer a pathway to assist indigenous homeless people with dignity and peace to fulfil tangihanga (traditional death customs and rituals) through re-establishing connections and healing at the end of life. We recommend that ACP in relation to Māori homelessness offers a Māori space, located within a web of Māori health professionals, to respond adequately to the specific demands that might arise from ACP. Essentially, these demands may relate to a) establishing restorative connections with whānau (extended family) and providing appropriate and consistent support whether in the context of the end of life or over time; b) addressing the needs and distress that may arise from expressing trauma events and offering a space to weave those experiences within a collective and transgenerational experience of trauma.