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Impact and Give Back
The end of life can be a stressful time for the individuals facing their death as well as for their families. Knowing that nothing more can be done, and the rest is just seeking comfort and release from pain, countless individuals enter hospice care in their final days—but that kind of care can be expensive and seemingly impossible for many who desperately need it.
Filling the gap and providing hope to those in this situation, the Hospice Foundation of the South opened the Hospice House in 2014 as the answer to a question that should never have to be asked: How can we pay?
“Our official mission statement is ‘The Hospice Foundation of the South is dedicated to providing resources for medical and emotional care for terminally A HOME ill patients and their families.’ Our actual mission goes far beyond that,” says Director Miranda Parker. That actual mission is to provide terminally ill patients who are in a preferred hospice program with the Hospice Foundation a place to stay during their final days—at no cost. Proper care is priority, so caregivers are in the home 24 hours a day to provide for the BY LIESEL SCHMIDTFOR CARE needs of the residents, who are enrolled into the preferred hospice care programs because of their need for a place to live while dying. Naturally, The Hospice House welcomes and encourages family members to visit, offering a pull-out bed in each room to accommodate overnight guest stays.
The number of individuals helped through the Hospice House in the last seven years is incredible. “To date, we have welcomed 278 patients and their families to take care of at end of life,” says Parker. “Prior to opening the Hospice House, the Hospice Foundation often supported indigent patients in the form of paying for hospice care, sitters, funeral assistance, medications, electric bills, and food. Our organization is important to not only provide a serene and loving place for end-of-life care, but also for the families. We remove the responsibility of caregiving for the family and enable them to go back to being simply that: the family. Being a caregiver for a terminally ill person is exhausting emotionally, mentally, physically, and financially.”
All funds for the Hospice House come from fundraisers and personal donations, and the Foundation receives no federal, state or insurance funding. The home has three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and a screened-in porch area. A common living room provides a place for families to congregate, and a kitchen and dining room accommodates residents and their family members. “This is the only home of this type in the community, and we are very proud to offer these services to the people of St. Tammany,” says Parker. “We provide a calm, serene, caring environment for end-of-life care, and that’s incredibly important.”
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Hospice Foundation of the South For more information on the Hospice House, call 985.643.5470 or visit thehospicehouse.org
“We remove the While the Hospice Foundation is not actually responsibility a hospice organization and does not provide hospice services, they do work with several of caregiving for hospice agencies to offer the Hospice House the family and and caregivers, which are provided by Home Instead Senior Care. As crucial as their work is, enable them to the Hospice House faces some tough challenges. go back to being “Our biggest struggles are creating awareness for what we offer to the community and, of simply that: the course, funding opportunities,” says Parker. family.” “Hospice and death are not something that we, as a society, like to discuss. With COVID, we have had to cancel our biggest fundraiser two years in a row. This has resulted in a 62% deficit in our revenue in 2020. We are always looking for opportunities to do a presentation on what we provide, free of charge, to families in need.”
As with any challenge, there are also triumphs to celebrate and hold on to. “Our most recent accomplishment was putting on the ‘Holes for Hospice’ golf tournament in May,” Parker observes. “This fundraiser came about because of our annual fundraisers, the Crawfish Cookoff and Wine and Dine with Hospice, being canceled. We had to find a way to support our mission, but we had never put on a golf tournament—nor did we know anything about hosting one. Still, we tackled it head-on; and because of the wonderful support from our community, it was a great success. We will host our second annual tournament in October 2022.”
As the end of life draws close, the Hospice House offers something invaluable: care and support. That’s something worth all the money in the world, and they give it freely.
– MICHELE COOPER M.D.
Board-Certified Plastic Surgeon
