Minden – Diakonie Foundation Salem

With 2,800 employees with and without disabilities, the Diakonie Foundation Salem is one of the largest employers in the Protestant Church District of Minden. It is a powerful social enterprise with a variety of offers in several locations.

In the field of geriatric care, the Diakonie Foundation Salem operates nursing homes for old people, Diakonie stations, day-care facilities and apartments for senior citizens. The foundation offers possibilities for training and further education with the Protestant Specialist Seminar for Geriatric Care.

About 1,100 people with physical, intellectual or mental disabilities work at the nine sites of the Diaconal Workshops Minden. This offer is complemented by housing facilities and assisted living services as well as a integrative day-care center for children and a special-needs school.

The foundation is active in child and youth services with living groups, a day group and foster families. There are also various support offers and four day-care facilities for children.

Today, the sisterhood – with deaconesses of the "old" and the "new" type – crucially defines the work and the life in the Diakonie Foundation Salem with religious services, prayers and bible studies, celebrations, cooperation and commitment to the community.

The history of the community of sisters began on March 31, 1868, with the founding of the "Mädchen-Rettungshaus Salem" (rescue house for girls) in Stettin in Pomerania by Thekla Baroness von Hünerbein. The Institution has been a member of the Kaiserswerther Generalkonferenz since 1891.

Initially, the deaconesses mainly worked in child and youth services and founded several children's homes in Stettin. After 1914, nursing care at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Hospital in Köslin became a second point of focus. After the expulsion from Pomerania due to the war and after intermediate stations in Oldenburg and Rastede, the Salem-Köslin sisters found a new home in Minden after 1950. Besides child and youth services and nursing care, another field of activity was added with geriatric care at the end of the 1950s; nursing care was then abandoned. Since the Merger with Diakonisches Werk Minden (in 2010), work with people with disabilities has also become part of the range of services provided.