There’s still a long road to travel before the province’s promise of $200,000 for two new hospice beds on the Sunshine Coast can have any real impact.
Hospice Society president Denis Fafard told Coast Reporter this week that there are still unresolved issues around where the extra beds could go.
The June 1, 2016 announcement by Van-couver Coastal Health (VCH) about the Silverstone Care Centre included a proposal to have space for four hospice beds in the privately run facility, due to open in 2018.
Fafard said the society knew then that a promise of $200,000 from the BC Centre for Palliative Care was part of the proposal, and that the society would need to raise as much as $2 million.
As well as confirming that promise, the announcement last week by Liberal MLA Jordan Sturdy included $8,000 in grants from the BC Centre for Palliative Care and the BC Hospice Palliative Care Association.
Fafard said $3,000 out of that money helped the society train volunteers and hold five well-attended advanced care planning workshops last fall, and more are planned for this year (including one Jan. 31 at the Sechelt Public Library).
While there is definitely a need for new hospice beds – Fafard estimates they have to turn away around three people every month because there isn’t an available bed – there’s also a pressing need for strong programs to support hospice care. Fafard said the grant money is key to being able to develop those programs.
“As a hospice society, one of the things we can do is get people talking about this. Talking about end of life. It’s happening all around us and we’re not talking about it,” he said.
Farad said the promise of $200,000 is significant, but it’s earmarked for furnishing two beds. “But we need beds to furnish. No beds, no money,” Fafard explained. “We’re in a position now of waiting for Van-couver Coastal Health to come up with a solution.”
Fafard said discussions continue with VCH about how to clear a major hurdle created by the health authority’s decision to strike a deal with a private company and close Shorncliffe, where the two existing hospice beds are located.
“There’s [still] a real barrier here because [Silverstone Care Centre] is a for-profit entity. We’re a not-for-profit,” Fafard said. “We have a legal opinion on this, because as a society we have to exhaust all options because we want to make this go ahead, but a for-profit entity cannot receive funds from a not-for-profit, so the model they’ve proposed is not workable.”
The documents recently released to Coast Reporter under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act show that the Services Agreement (SA) requires Silverstone Care Centre to “enter into a services agreement with VCH for the operation of an adult day program at the facility and a hospice at the extension to the facility.” But the SA also gives VCH an option to change the “designation of services … and/or the type of program” for beds covered by the agreement to respite or hospice use with a least 60 days’ notice.
A series of emails between executives of VCH and Trellis Seniors Services from mid-July of 2016 gives some insight into what’s been done to make sure hospice space is available at Silverstone.
In a July 16, 2016 email, Trellis president Mary McDougall points out that it would be more cost-effective to build the hospice during construction of the rest of the facility. “While we can certainly defer building the hospice to another time, it is a small project and the reassembly of work crews on the site will make it more expensive than simply building it all today. … For now, my direction to our group is to ‘stay the course’ – which means, we are going to build the hospice. I am hopeful that we can resolve the legal structure and any other issues.”
McDougall notes in an earlier email that Trellis wants to ensure the hospice side of the project is a success.
“At the end of the day, as a society, we’ll work with anybody, we’ll do anything to come up with a solution to this,” Fafard said. “But it has to be a solution that’s workable and viable and really does provide hospice care, because if no solution is found, we’ll be looking at two beds in a residential care facility. That’s it.”
