Last week, Pat Stuart, the executive director of Hospice Wellington had to make a difficult decision of prohibiting visitors from entering her building, and within days, she saw an outpouring of community support determined to make sure residents still saw their loved ones virtually.
As soon as community member Nikki Sweeney heard about Hospice Wellington closing its doors, she swiftly created a GoFundMe page to raise money to buy iPads for every resident in the building so they could chat with their families on FaceTime. At the time, Hospice Wellington only had one computer in use to connect residents with their families.
“Honestly, my heart just broke when I heard about them having to make the decision to close their doors,” said Sweeney adding that she wanted to come up with a solution to the problem of families not being able to see their loved ones.
Within 24 hours of the GoFundMe page’s creation on Wednesday,12 tablets and iPads were dropped off to Hospice Wellington (seven of those were brand new iPads dropped off from an anonymous donor and the remaining five iPads and tablets were donated by community members).
The funds collected reached nearly half of the $6,000 fundraising goal within days and the community effort not only met the goal of needed iPads but also left room for additional funds to replace outdated technology in the building.
“Honestly I'm blown away with everybody sharing, everybody being so supportive, Even if its $25, $25 goes super far,” said Sweeney.
Hospice Wellington now plans to replace its 10 year old TVs with smart TVs in each room that will allow approximately seven of its current residents to stream tv shows and movies.
“I can never thank this community enough,” said Stuart.
“It’s a beautiful human story.”
And the community support has been ongoing said Stuart.
Stuart said last week, she feared that Hospice Wellington would run out of gowns for their residents and asked a volunteer if she would consider making a gown. As a result of that request, The Hospice Wellington volunteers and the Royal City Quilters' Guild got together and presented Stuart with several homemade gowns that can be washed.
“And that's the community. They’re so good. We really really miss our volunteers,” said Stuart.
“I really try to keep these close to me, so I keep positive.”
Stuart said the difficult decision fo not allowing visitors and their 186 volunteers to enter was not only to control the virus from coming in but also to protect Hospice Wellington’s staff so they can continue to take care of their residents.
“That's really important to us to be able to take people at end of life care,” said Stuart.
“And it makes me very sad, it makes my staff very sad, because that's not what we represent. But for this time at this moment, it's kind of what I have to do right now. But it's going to get a lot better.”
She said the centre put many practices in place such as keeping an art therapist, a psychosocial spiritual coordinator and staff at hand who will just sit with residents whenever needed.
“We're trying to connect families for the nurses. They're calling the families twice a day just to give updates on that. And the families are welcome to call 24 hours a day. And, you know, if somebody wants to do a legacy project, we'll make that happen too,” said Stuart.
