The New West Hospice Society is reaching out to the community to share its plan for creating a compassionate community.
The society is holding Community Conversation 2.0 on Saturday, June 17 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Anvil Centre. It will share developments that have taken place since the initial Community Conversations event last fall and get input on how to move forward.
“We asked the citizens what is happening already in New Westminster and what do you think needs to happen,” Kay Johnson, chair of the New West Hospice Society, recently told city council. “We decided we need to build partnerships and work together with other community agencies. We have already started a lot of that work. We wanted to be inclusive and diverse.”
Attendees at last October’s Community Conversation told the society they’d like it to normalize dying, death and grief by talking to community members and kids in schools.
“They wanted us, as an organization and as a community, to reach in to people when they needed some support,” Johnson said at the meeting. “Surprise of all surprises, they said they wanted us to build a hospice residence. That was not on our radar, I have to be honest with you. They said it. So we said, ‘OK, I guess that’s what we want, that’s what we are going to do.’”
According to Johnson, New Westminster is currently without hospice beds in the city, as St. Mary’s Hospital closed and beds were removed from Queen’s Park Care Centre. She said the health authority has indicated New Westminster is “under-bedded when it comes to hospice care” and would be willing to provide operating funds if the society builds a hospice.
Rather than doing exactly what’s been done in other areas, the society is hoping to develop a made-in-New West plan for addressing hospice care.
“We are hoping we can introduce some new ideas on the whole idea of partnerships and seeing if we can work with other organization to do some fundraising. I don’t know why more organizations don’t do that – get together on something really amazing,” Johnson said. “One of our rules is questions everything. We are not going to do things the way they have always been done if we can find a better way to do it.”
The New West Hospice Society is seeking the city’s endorsement for its plans to create a compassionate communities model, which operates on the belief that it everyone’s responsibility to care for one another in times of illness, health crisis and personal loss.
“It’s about neighbours helping neighbours, especially in times of need. Some of us may actually remember when that happened in our smaller rural communities, when something went sideways we all pitched in. That still happens now but we want to make a focus on end-of-life care for folks who might need a little extra support,” she said. “We want to build a sense of community, social connectedness when it is needed the most, and inclusiveness.”
The New West Hospice Society is proposing to create a Good Neighbour Partnership, which would see volunteers screened and trained to be facilitators for teams helping people at the end of life and helping them be cared for in their own homes.
Council referred the request of officially designating New Westminster as a compassionate community to staff.
“About four years ago, my family lost four members within six months. Certainly our family went through a very difficult time,” said Mayor Jonathan Cote. “There were supports that were very helpful through that process but also some shortcomings. I think the work that your group is doing is very inspiring and something I hope to connect with the city in terms of partnering with you.”
