Hospice hit hard by COVID-19 measures, needs financial help

The Algoma Residential Community Hospice (ARCH) is in need of financial support from the community.

While the hospice has been able to keep up its valuable service as a residential setting in which families can spend precious hours, make final memories and say goodbyes to terminally-ill loved ones, the Fourth Line facility is facing a $25,000 deficit so far in 2020, due to the effects of COVID-19.

“We are only partially government-funded, and we rely on community support to keep our doors open,” wrote Lee Rendell, ARCH fund development manager, in an email to SooToday Monday.

“Many of our major fundraisers and events have been postponed or cancelled (due to the provincial government clampdown on social gatherings during the pandemic).”

“At the midpoint in March, once the pandemic hit, what we experienced was an immediate shortfall in donations,” Rendell said, later speaking to SooToday in a telephone interview. 

The drop in donations from businesses hit by the COVID clampdown and from individuals who lost, or are in danger of, losing their jobs due to the clampdown has hit the hospice hard.

“There’s uncertainty about the future, and whenever you're in a time when you’re uncertain about the future, one of the first things you’re going to stop doing is donating and that’s for fear for the safety of your family and your own financial future,” Rendell said.

Still, an ARCH email states “your contribution helps to guarantee that our Hospice can support our community’s health and well-being. Your donation goes towards round-the-clock resident care, home-cooked meals for residents and their loved ones, as well as grief and bereavement support through loss.”

“If every household in Algoma gave just $2 per month, it would fully fund ARCH for the year...ARCH’s (immediate) goal is to raise $25,000 to make up for the deficit incurred so far in 2020.”

Donations to the campaign can be made online as well as by mail. 

Rendell said ARCH had to ‘layoff’ its dedicated group of 140 volunteers, nine of whom perform what amounts to what could almost be described as full-time duties.

“When COVID hit we had to limit the exposure risk for our residents and their families. As wonderful as it is to have 140 volunteers and as much as we miss them, that’s a lot of people to have a lot of contact points. I’d say probably up to a quarter of our volunteers are seniors and we were directly requested by APH  (Algoma Public Health) to not encourage seniors to be in the residence (seniors being a high-risk group for COVID-19).”    

“So, we actually reallocated a lot of our (paid) staff to step in and do the additional screening required by APH, as well as the additional cleaning and food service procedures we do to make sure our residents and families are kept safe.”

Rendell said now, ARCH managers, along with nursing staff, are conducting COVID-19 screening.

Rendell said, fortunately, there have been no layoffs of paid ARCH staff.

“That's considered a last resort.”

“We’ve continued to hold strong through this pandemic. We’ve been able to operate at peak capacity in terms of being able to serve residents and their families because we know how important that is...we also maintain one of the few hospices in all of Ontario that was able to maintain visitors. Most other hospices in the province shut down to visitors entirely. We did have to put restrictions in place and they’ve changed probably almost every week since it started to keep our residents safe...we’ve also had window visits and digital visits.” 

As of Monday, Rendell said ARCH is allowing two designated visitors per resident for indoor visits, and now that pleasant summer weather is here, for outdoor visits (though she added, visitor conditions change often, so call ahead).