 NOVEMBER IS NATIONAL HOSPICE MONTH |
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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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| VOLUNTEERS...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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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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| A 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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| CAMP
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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| "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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| 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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| 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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| 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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