Winner Update: HOSPICE

Peter O’Neill’s my name. I’m General Manager of Hospice South Canterbury. A couple of months ago when I was standing in this spot in a different room, you’ve got $11,000 on the line and I’ve got to convince you in five minutes. It is pretty daunting but heck, well worthwhile in our case.

The impact that this made was two-fold. One, on me personally just the aspect of having to talk to you all and how daunting that was and I made such an impact I had to go and have two beers straight afterwards so that was quite pleasurable as well.

But from a financial point of view, we’ve done three things with the money. We’ve done two of them actually and there’s one to come. Last week was Hospice Awareness Week. So we were able to put some more resource into that and we ran two sessions on dealing with grief, particularly around anniversaries, Christmas, holidays, birthdays, that sort of thing. So that was great to be able to put that on and to put more resource into that.

Now the section on what our cottage and daycare center offers. We’re able to get the word out there more because we know there’s people out there that can use that service. Secondly, this week we had arrive from the UK a palliative care medical specialist. Obviously that’s required some office revamps and so we’ve needed another computer, desk, and phone and so your money’s gone directly to that.

Thirdly, though, and I think most importantly, it’s given us the confidence to go ahead with a pilot program that we’re looking at so that people in their own homes, dealing with a terminally ill relative, we can give them the skills and confidence to look after that person for longer. So that person can stay in their home for longer. Just simple things like being able to lift a patient out of bed and things like that.

It’s a six-week program, so we’re gathering the resources at the moment of how to run that and then also we’ll also look at employing people to do it. That’s a really meaningful thing for this community. You can know that your $11,000 is going to make an impact in those ways.

So thank you very much for the privilege. Woo hoo!