Shepparton News - GV Hospice Care
A new era for palliative care
After more than 18 months of planning, GV Hospice Care Service is on the way to moving into its new home, a purposebuilt Community Palliative Care Hub that will provide specialist services to communities throughout Greater Shepparton.
“This new state-of-the-art Community Palliative Care Hub will for the first time, accomodate all of our staff including nurses, social workers, bereavement councellors and administration all under one roof GV Hospice Care president Jeanette Powell said.
The better space and facilities will allow GV Hospice Care staff to better meet the needs of patients and their families.
“The building has provisions for on-site consulting, it has family rooms for families in distress or bereaved,” GV Hospice Care vice-president John Beaver said.
“If they come into the building there is a quiet space for them to talk to our specialist staff.”
Mr Beaver has been with GV Hospice Care for 30 years and has seen the need for palliative care in the Goulburn Valley grow proportionally with the region’s ageing population.
GV Hospice Care is currently caring for about 100 patients (a number that fluctuates), with another 140 bereaved carers receiving support — but this number is set to increase steadily over the years.
And the creation of the Community Palliative Care Hub has future-proofed GV Hospice Care’s service to be able to meet the demands of an ever-increasing ageing population.
“Our new building is responding to the current needs, and supporting the future needs of a palliative care hub within the Greater Shepparton area,”Mr Beaver said.
Part of GV Hospice Care’s long-term plan for the new building is to leaseout space extra to the service’s needs, which will raise money to cover basic maintenance costs so all other funding goes towards providing patient care.
“We’re hoping that the leasing or renting out of the second story of the building will cover the cost and the expenses of the building that we’re going to move into,” Mrs Powell said.
“But the community’s fundraising and donations will continue to pay for the after-hours service and specialist equipment we provide free of cost such as patient beds, wheelchairs and commodes.”
Mrs Powell said they hoped to lease the space out to a specialist group that complements the services that GV Hospice Care provides.
“It may be that there could be a regional clinician that comes, that would rent some rooms upstairs so that they can see their patients there, which may be the same as our patients,” she said.
The services that GV Hospice Care provides have touched the lives of many families in the community,
most of whom give back to the service through donations or volunteering.
Jo Hanson, the daughter of a GV Hospice Care patient, said she was happy to see the improved facility for the selfless staff to provide even better outcomes for other families in the community.
“It will be amazing for them to have a beautiful facility to work in,” Ms Hanson said.
“There will be sleeping quarters there for the helpers who work overnight, that will be valuable for them.
“A lot of them travel, one particular nurse has to come over from Nathalia. Now she can stay overnight and be safe, which is really important.”
Mr Beaver said it was patients’ families like the Hansons and other generous members of the community that made it possible for GV Hospice Care to deliver its services.
“The Greater Shepparton community has been extremely supportive since our inception and we can’t thank that community enough for all the ways they support us in fundraising, support of our op shop and their many generous donations that allow us to provide a
24/7 service,” he said.