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Highlights . . .
"Our heartfelt thanks for all the help you gave our Mom. Heaven holds a special place for all of you, especially for your support and patience. Mom could not have passed on in such peace and with such dignity without your help. We will always be grateful." - Hospice patient family member


 

Current News | In Recent Seasons
Current News (Fall-Winter 2007-08)
NOVEMBER IS NATIONAL HOSPICE MONTH JCAHO ACCREDITATION
RECEIVED BY EEH
VOLUNTEERS...WE THANK YOU AT THE HOLIDAYS,
EEH OFFERS DIVERSE PROGRAMS
EEH ACCREDITED AS JEWISH HOSPICE LETTERS FROM FRIENDS

A CAMP GOOD GRIEF LEGACY - HELPING FAMILIES IN TANZANIA

CAMP GOOD GRIEF
121 CAMPERS IN '07!
"DINING OUT" CELEBRATION - WITH THANKS FROM EEH

EEH RECORD OF SERVICE

THRIFT SHOP THRIVES IN 2ND DECADE CORCORAN CARES...
FOR EAST END HOSPICE

 

NOVEMBER IS NATIONAL HOSPICE MONTH

FROM OUR PRESIDENT
Recognizing that Americans demonstrate great compassion by caring for those in need – and
acknowledging hospice caregivers for their dedication in providing comfort and peace to individuals in their last days – Congress designated November as National Hospice Month. Commemorating National Hospice Month gives people in our communities the opportunity to learn more about hospice as the choice for compassionate and professional end-of-life care. And it is a perfect time for us to thank our volunteers, friends, and neighbors for continuing to support the important work of East End Hospice.

Congress established the Medicare Hospice Benefit in 1983 to ensure all beneficiaries access to the high-quality end-of-life care that a certified hospice provides. Americans are promised the opportunity to live the end of their lives free of pain and with the services they need. Last year, across the country, 1.2 million people with life-limiting illness received care through a hospice. In a nationwide Gallup poll conducted by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association, it was found that most Americans know little about hospice care, yet nine out of ten of us state a preference to be cared for at home rather than in a hospital or nursing home if diagnosed with a terminal illness.

We must get the word out: Hospice provides those in need with the option of being cared for at the place they call home.

Hospice care was created to help people live with dignity, comfort, and compassion at the end of life. Hospice nurses, doctors, social workers, spiritual caregivers, LPNs, home health aides, and volunteers provide pain management, symptom control, psychosocial support and spiritual care, bringing comfort and dignity to patients and families during one of life’s most
challenging times.

End-of-life care is a topic few of us are comfortable talking about, but please do know that
we have many dedicated hospice workers in our communities ready to help broach this important subject. We urge you to talk with your loved ones and your health care provider. Start the conversation necessary to be sure that your wishes are honored, and that your family receives the support they need.

End-of-life care decisions – what we want and what we do not want, the care we choose to receive and the caregivers who provide it – are intensely personal to each of us and are best thought through before a time of need.

This season begins the 17th anniversary of East End Hospice serving the people in our communities. In that time our professional staff and volunteers brought hospice care to over 6,000 East End families, providing necessities beyond what insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid reimbursed in order to meet our patients’ needs and to bring comfort to children and families.

As we look to the future and carry on the vision of our founders, we invite you to partner with us in our commitment to care for all those who seek our help to reach their life’s end with dignity, free of pain, and surrounded by those whom they love. We are proud to serve this
community and ask that you join us in thanking our dedicated volunteers, staff, and loyal supporters for their devotion to this worthy cause.
– Priscilla Ruffin

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JCAHO ACCREDITATION RECEIVED BY EEH

We are pleased to report that EEH has again been accredited by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The Joint Commission evaluates nearly 15,000 health care organizations and programs in the U.S., with the mission of improving the safety and quality of care. East End Hospice again received accolades for its programs for the East End community.

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 newsVOLUNTEERS...WE THANK YOU

The hours defy counting! Volunteers for patient families, Camp Good Grief, the Thrift Shop, office tasks – we’d be lost without you. Thank you!

Volunteer coordinators Faith Tiner and Susan DiSario report that patient family volunteer
training is newly completed in November with close to twenty new volunteers joining the EEH
team. And this year, Camp Good Grief had a record number of volunteers: 43 adults and 28 youth – the most ever volunteers for the most-ever campers.

Thrift Shop volunteers, board member Dottie Evans notes, are essential to the shop’s growing
operation, helping staff members Pat Miloski and Leigh Hubbard with diverse tasks from arranging and pricing and making everything sparkle, to greeting customers and selling the Thrift Shop’s donated treasures. The number of Thrift Shop customers continues to grow, with sales giving steady financial support to Camp Good Grief.

And the Mailing Ladies! No essential in-house mailing would be possible without these dedicated EEH friends: arranging, sealing, stamping, keeping all in perfect order and ready to meet rigorous post office standards. Thank you, dear Hospice friends!

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AT THE HOLIDAYS, EEH OFFERS DIVERSE PROGRAMS

The EEH program “Coping Through the Holidays,” in mid-November, continues to be a
steady source of comfort for the East End community, notes bereavement coordinator Sarah
Zimmerman. All are welcomed at this now-traditional program presented by the EEH Bereavement Care Team.

And starting in October, the team offered an eight-session bereavement group for middle
school students at Riverhead High School, in cooperation with the school’s social workers. “Their guidance staff is very tuned in to what we have to offer,” observes Sarah. “It’s good for their students, and the school has become a wonderful source of Camp Good Grief youth volunteers.”

In December, EEH will also offer adult bereavement programs in Westhampton and East
Hampton. The Tree of Lights ceremonies, Sarah confirms, will be held on December 2 in
Westhampton Beach, East Hampton, and Southold.

Regarding Rebecca DiSunno’s remarkable trip to Tanzania (see below), Sarah says of this fellow co-author of the Jeremy Goes to Camp Good Grief book, “Becky is sharing her gifts around the world, because she is a gifted woman. I am so glad to hear of her work in Africa.”

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EEH ACCREDITED AS JEWISH HOSPICE

EEH is happy to join the growing number of hospices – fifty nationwide thus far – to receive accreditation by the National Institute for Jewish Hospice. NIJH is the national accrediting organization for hospice programs and organizations caring for the Jewish terminally ill.

Accreditation is for one year, and yields many benefits for EEH serving the residents of our East End communities. Among these benefits – updates on new Jewish insights on treating the Jewish terminally ill, new NIJH publications, answers to questions about Jewish law, and referrals to East End Hospice care.

The Accreditation took place at an April conference in Queens, and EEH social worker Margaret Bromberg and pastoral care coordinator Pat O’Neill received training in connection with the accreditation award.

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LETTERS FROM FRIENDS

“This is the most difficult time of my life, and though I had time to prepare for the inevitable, after 37 years together the loss is devastating. Thank you for all that you did in bringing dignity and calm to her, and support for us.”

leaf

“Thank you so much for the wonderful care you gave our father, during his final illness.
Because of the gentle and professional attention of your staff, Dad was able to die peacefully at
home, surrounded by his family.”

leaf

“My husband and I wish to thank you for the loving care you gave our friends. Your capable
staff quietly and surely took over the struggle of those last weeks, giving assurance and rest to their weary souls and allowing them the comfort of home. What wonderful people you are.”

leaf

“Having never coped with a diagnosis of terminal illness in a close family member, I only wish
I had contacted you much, much sooner than I did. You benefited my father because he really
wanted someone to give him permission to die. I wanted him to try to keep on fighting to live,
however I know it was impossible in his condition. I now feel I know what to do if cancer strikes me.”

leaf

“Thank you for gifting my dear and precious friend with your wonderful care. May you
continue to serve others so lovingly. God bless you all.”

“We sought out Hospice a little early since my husband and I felt it would be better to get
acquainted with the people involved while he was still up and about and was thinking clearly.
We are all grateful for what you did for him, and for all of us.”

leaf

“East End Hospice is an absolute Godsend to terminally ill patients and their families. I can’t imagine surviving my sister’s last illness without the nurse and the rest of the Hospice staff.”

leaf

“My brother loved all his Hospice contacts, and I did too. Their warmth, kindness and under- standing helped us for the last months of his life and brought us closer together.”

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newsA CAMP GOOD GRIEF LEGACY - HELPING FAMILIES IN TANZANIA

We could think of it as Camp Good Grief in a backpack,” says art therapist Rebecca DiSunno, of her work in Africa this summer. The work is a partnership between two organizations well known to Becky and her husband: Cross Cultural Solutions, an international volunteer organization, and the graduate Art Therapy program at New York University. The partnership’s effects have touched the lives of all participants deeply, from those helped to those who traveled far to help them.

Becky speaks of this work –“Two years ago my husband and I were placed as volunteers in Rau, Tanzania, a village at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. The AIDS epidemic has affected every part of this culture. We met grieving people in every place we went to work. There is
an increasing number of orphans who are taken in by families wherever possible. Virtually no
families have just their own children–each has orphaned siblings from aunts, uncles, brothers,
and sisters.

“My husband and I came home, thinking about the wonderful families we had met and about the lack of mental health services in Tanzania – and that grief dominates every aspect of their lives. We thought about how we do art therapy at Camp Good Grief – a very meaningful way,
through pictorial expression, of dealing with a child’s grief. And we remembered the model that Sarah and Priscilla developed at East End Hospice, and the Jeremy book we created together, using art therapy in helping groups of grieving children.

"So, we were able to develop a pilot program from the Camp Good Grief model. Graduate students from the NYU and Nazareth College art therapy programs, volunteers, and NYU
instructors became a team of nineteen in Rau, Tanzania, in July, with our housing arranged
by Cross Cultural Solutions. Ours was a three-week program, and I went two weeks early to arrange our placements.

“In Rau, we worked with many groups – among them, women’s HIV-AIDS groups, orphanages, children in special educational settings, nursery and primary schools, people with disabilities, and a juvenile detention center. Our students went to their assigned places every day at 7:30 am, came back at 1, then went back out in the afternoons to additional sites. Everyone speaks Swahili, and we had interpreters when needed, but with the children the
art has its own language. And the faces of the women seeing watercolors for the first time . . . they were full of wonder. For all of us, it was a life-changing experience.

“One art therapist who had been an art therapist intern at Camp Good Grief, Kim Nolan,
worked in one of Rau’s local outdoor nursery schools. Each day she would walk through the village of mud huts, with her Camp Good Grief backpack. And each day a little boy, Oscar, who lived in the village with his grandmother, would run out to meet her and grab her backpack and carry it to school. . . .”

An early outcome of Becky’s pilot program is that with other New York University faculty,
she will serve on a panel at the forthcoming American Art Therapy Conference in
Albuquerque, with other professors who have started art therapy programs around the world, to exchange ideas and stories about their work and its future.

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newsCAMP GOOD GRIEF - 121 CAMPERS IN '07!

Look How We’ve Grown” – the headline for this year’s EEH Annual Appeal story about Camp Good Grief. CGG has grown from 28 campers in its first year, 1997, to 121 in this summer’s week-long session in July. It was an eventful, beautiful, comforting time with joyous moments for everyone present – campers, volunteers, EEH staff, and visiting family. Said one CGG Youth Volunteer of this year’s camp, “It has been the most rewarding experience in my life.”

Of Camp Good Grief’s important work EEH president Priscilla
Ruffin says, “We are making a difference in the lives of children, and
we are deeply grateful for the privilege of doing so, and the wonderful
support we receive from so many generous people.”

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news "DINING OUT" CELEBRATION - WITH THANKS FROM EEH

“The Joy of Not Cooking” – a much-appreciated concept! Our Dining Out coupons have been so welcomed by our community friends that the list keeps growing: the restaurants that so generously participate, and the friends who love to help Hospice by purchasing those little coupon booklets, and then tell other friends to buy them too.

From 29 restaurants in the first year to 37 last year to a hoped for 50 for the March ’08 offering – the Dining Out campaign is working well, and helping Hospice with the much-needed annual funding it provides.

“It’s fun for us to get to know the restaurant owners,” says EEH development associate Dave Johnson, who heads up the project. “I am so amazed by the outpouring of good wishes when we stop by or just speak in a phone call. The restaurant owners say they wish they could do even more for Hospice.”

“This program has been without question the best discount program we have participated in,” says Don Sullivan of Southampton Publick House. “It is a great opportunity for us to help out East End Hospice. We have definitely seen an increase in customers as well – on average, we get 3 to 4 coupons per week. It is a win-win situation for everyone.”

Dining Out proceeds and popularity have both steadily grown. We’re close to ten years now – next year’s coupons will mark the tenth Dining Out year – and there are both longtime participants and welcome new ones. The EEH development office’s Chrissy Michne worked with volunteer Faith Chase and board member Jim deBlasis in the campaign’s early years, and like Dave remembers the fun of choosing the handsomest coupon papers and inks, and more recently the pleasure of a second press run when all the coupon booklets sold out so fast.

We could not be more grateful. . . .

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news EEH RECORD OF SERVICE

Since our certification in September 1991, we have admitted more than 6,000 patients . . . provided advocacy and guidance to countless others . . . cared for patients with cancer, AIDS, heart disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, emphysema, liver disease, and Alzheimer’s.

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news THRIFT SHOP THRIVES IN 2ND DECADE

The Thrift Shop is meeting its mission every day – raising funds for the work of Hospice, by offering an array of beautiful and modestly priced goods from clothing to linen to vases to art of many pleasing kinds. The mission was undertaken ten years ago when the Thrift Shop opened on January 9, 1997, thanks to the work of East End Hospice board members Jeanne Waller and Dottie Evans. Here’s a 2007 Thrift Shop portrait in photographs – please come in!


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news CORCORAN CARES...FOR EAST END HOSPICE

Corcoran Cares – the non-profit charitable organization established by
the Corcoran Group Real Estate in the Hamptons – named East End Hospice as a beneficiary of their charitable giving. Beneficiaries were invited by the Corcoran Cares Committee (shown here) to meet Corcoran brokers at a reception in May. And, a very good and grateful
time was had by all!

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