OLDS - In recent weeks, Mary Smith brought a live duck and goose to Season’s Encore to visit a man on a journey.
The society she works for has two end-of-life hospice suites located within the Olds retirement home. Smith was visiting one of its tenants who had made the special visitor request.
“He was overjoyed. He was so happy,” said Smith, adding fulfilling his request is part of the Olds and District Hospice Society’s mission. “That might be a more unusual thing that we have done.”
Hospice suites provide a place for families to share in someone’s final journey with the support of volunteers if needed, all at no charge to the family.
“We’ve brought puppies in to sit with our clients, Christmas decorations, having the family around, whatever food they want, basically whatever the individual is wanting, we’re just trying to provide that to them. Pain management is a huge one,” said Smith, who is the society’s executive director.
Clients’ journeys are not about dying, she said.
“It’s about living the best you can,” said Smith. “You will eventually die; everybody will. But hospice care is about focusing on life and the living and to help individuals be as comfortable as they can.”
The suites are provided through a tri-partnership with Alberta Health Services and Season’s Encore. They include a bedroom, living room, kitchen and 24-hour support.
For a non-profit society to cover approximately $7,000 a month in rent and incidentals for the suites, donations are relied upon to prop up an estimated $240,000 annual budget that supports many other programs.
That’s why recent donations, including a $10,000 donation from Didsbury-based West-Can Seal Coating Inc. will make such a difference, said Smith.
“West-Can’s donation means that we will be able to support our hospice clients at no charge,” said Smith. “It’s huge for the suites because they have just covered two months essentially. It’s massive and we can’t thank them enough.”
A statement from West-Can owners said that over the years, several family, friends and work colleagues have required the services of hospice.
“Through all of our experiences, we have yet to encounter a hospice organization that wasn’t operating at full capacity,” company officials said in a statement which also included high praise for the local organization.
Smith said Olds and District Hospice Soiety is no different. The number of clients the society is serving has increased substantially since the self-named “muffin ladies” first conceived the idea of helping people on their journey 10 years ago.
“The Olds and District Hospice Society was formed by five women initially and they all went to church together and they kind of named themselves the muffin ladies. So they would get together over coffee and muffins and they thought that Olds really needed support for loved ones facing a palliative journey to be able to stay in town. So that’s where the idea got started,” Smith said.
In recent years, Smith said an aging population, promotion of a Nav-CARE program, word of mouth and the gradual shedding of stigma have combined to bolster the number of clients seeking services.
“So at this current time, we have four hospice (clients) which is basically the max that we serve at any given time, we have the four day hospice (clients) which is the most that we’ve served at any one time. We have 15 bereavement, that’s doubled. And then we also have 20 Nav-CARE (clients), which we really didn’t have any before.”
Clients are from Mountain View County and the urban centres within it. Smith said people from outside of the region may be accommodated if there’s family in the area.
The society works with other similar groups across the province and in the area to best meet needs, she added.
Even though the society has 64 volunteers there are hopes of increasing that base because of the increase in clients.
“We do not just limit our volunteers to sitting in our hospice suites,” Smith said. “We also have volunteers that go to the hospital and they go to the home (of clients). They offer respite support, emotional support, basically whatever the client needs. And caregivers tend to get really burned out when they’re supporting somebody who is on a palliative journey,” said Smith.
The society’s model, especially the tri-partnership for hospice suites, is being looked at as a model for other rural hospice programs, she said.
The Mountain View Film group recently donated $5,600 to the society to help develop an educational video to be shared with other hospice societies and palliative care organizations as an education piece to release some of the stigma around hospice and palliative care.
Red Deer and District Community Foundation and the Sylvan Lake Endowment Fund recently gave the society $6,500 to partly help with the cost of the video as well as to support Nav-CARE and the hospice suites.
And the Kiwanis Club of Olds made a $9,600 donation with proceeds from the club’s Wine Survivor contest.
