WILLIAMSBURG – Despite serving North Dundas and South Dundas for 33 years, too often people remain unaware of Dundas County Hospice and the invaluable services it provides free of charge.
Offering a wide variety of services to anyone suffering from a terminal or life-threatening illness, Dundas County is the place that can help.
DCH supports clients and their caregivers through all stages of their illness and beyond.
About 10 years ago Dundas County Hospice moved to its current location, along County Road 31 to better accommodate its staff, clients and equipment lending services.
And this year the organization became accredited, an accomplishment the staff and board or directors are proud to have achieved.
“It gives us credibility,” said board chair Arnold Scheerder. “It’s important, not only for ourselves, but for the other agencies we work with and for the population to know that there is oversight.”
Dundas County Hospice is a nonprofit charity organization. Fifty-five per cent of its $220,000 budget is through Ontario Health, but to keep the services it offers up and running they must fundraise about $100,000 annually.
“It’s quite the challenge, but we’ve been able to meet it up to this point,” said Scheerder. General donations, in memorial donations and events like the annual Hike for Hospice, golf tournament and more are all important to helping the organization meet its annual fundraising needs, along with third party events often organized by area service clubs.
While DCH is meeting its needs at this point, they are looking forward in time and anticipate that they will see a significant need for their services as the population continues aging.
Sheerder, points out that Statistics Canada shows that just 11 years from now 25 per cent of the population will be retired.
“The reality is that the older generation has more requirements for care,” he said, adding that rural populations statistically are not as healthy as urban populations.
“We can see the need for hospice will increase drastically,” said Scheerder. While they see the need coming they have already started to do something about it.
“We have a planning committee already in place and we’re looking at what we need to do for the next 5 years and 10 years to get ready for that increase that we know is coming,” said Scheerder.
Even though they have a committee looking towards the future, the organization is continuing and even improving its day-to-day operations.
Staffed, part time with a handful of professionals, including nurses and a bereavement counselor, DCH has a special group of 40 dedicated volunteers who support the variety of programs available.
Jackie Imrie runs the visiting hospice program. She goes into the community to assess people’s needs in terms of support, care and practical needs such as equipment and transportation. She also assesses family needs and actively works to put in place the things they need including counselling support. She has a caseload of about 40 people for whom she is helping to navigate the process and connecting with agencies and people to meet their needs.
Jen Pretty coordinates day programming whereby clients come to the home to participate in various activities, hear from guest speakers and enjoy a hot meal.
Clients time at these programs gives caregivers a couple of hours of respite time.
Home support is a program developed by Linda Johnson to help clients who have specific identified needs around their homes. Not nursing help but just a helping hand to get things done around the house.
This program and the equipment lending program are not government funded in any way and rely solely on fundraising and donations to operate.
“It’s a really gratifying program for us to put in place, seeing the good work that we can get done for a family and how much it helps,” said Johnson.
Dundas County Hospice’s equipment lending program provides walkers, wheelchairs and much more, free of charge. Through that program, palliative clients can get whatever they need for as long as they need it or community clients can borrow items such as a walker that they need while recovering from something like a surgery.
Last year about 300 people used this lending service and those numbers have increased this year already surpassing that number.
The grief and bereavement aspect of DCH services is another area experiencing significant growth.
Trained volunteers, peer support programs such as the men’s group that will this summer have a Men’s workshop where they can gather, talk, and tinker, are all part of what Dundas County Hospice has to offer.
The grief and bereavement programming has grown so much that DCH is in the process of hiring a grief and bereavement coordinator.
Sheerder points out that Dundas County Hospice’s need for volunteers never stops so he is always seeking new volunteers to join the hospice’s volunteer network.
“The commitment can be as large or as small as you wish. Anyone with any skill or interest is welcome. It can be as simple as coming out to weed the flower beds. Not all of our volunteerism is client-centred,” he said, explaining that while client-centred volunteering requires training, they have many other opportunities that don’t have that training component.
To learn more about any of these programs, to volunteer or anyone in need of any of these services can simply reach out to Dundas County Hospice directly. “We’re only a phone call away,” said Imrie. They can be reached at 613-535-2215.
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