Hospice Awareness Week May 16–22, 2022

Next week is Hospice Awareness Week which is a special opportunity for us to let people know a little more about Hospice Whanganui and about what we do. Talking about living with a life-limiting illness can be challenging at times, both for those who are living with the illness and those supporting, loving and caring for them. Hospice Whanganui is here to help navigate through some of the complex challenges along this journey, whatever they may be. Our team of passionate and experienced professionals include nursing, social work, chaplaincy, pharmacy and medical doctors love helping over 350 patients and their whanau every year, to work through whatever difficult and complex challenges they may be experiencing at any given time.

Our goal is to see all people with a lifelimiting illness and their whanau live every moment to the full in whatever way they choose.

We are passionate about taking our service and our care to the place where people feel most comfortable – whether that be in their home, in a residential care facility, or if they choose to come and see us, in our beautiful facility on Virginia Road.

Every day, our amazing staff are out there in the community visiting with patients and their families and helping them to determine the best care and support for them, whether this is managing pain and symptoms, supporting families through the journey of caring for the loved one, helping with practical things like legal or financial matters, getting the right equipment into the home that will support someone to remain more mobile, installing a medical alarm if needed or providing support through bereavement and grief.

We also have regular events and programmes that help to provide information about the various issues that may come up during a person’s journey of living with a life-limiting illness. As a specialist organisation, we work closely with GPs, medical doctors, community nurses, residential care providers and many others in the community to also provide support to them as they care for people with a life-limiting illness.

We love being part of a wider team in our community that wraps whatever support is needed around someone’s life at the time they need it.

Please check out our website and our Facebook page for upcoming events and for ways to get involved.

We are extremely excited to be announcing a few fundraising events in the coming weeks, now that we are in an Orange Covid setting.

We are always looking for more volunteers to join the amazing team of volunteers across all parts of our organisation, including the gardens, the shops, and up at our head office, and we would love to hear from you if you would like to get involved. Our three shops in Whanganui East, Gonville and Boutique do an amazing job of helping to provide vital funds to our organisation and without the generosity of our community donating items to fill our shops this would not be possible.

Thank you, Whanganui, for your amazing and ongoing support to us. We are grateful and could not do this work without your generous support and encouragement each year.