Cold Lake Palliative Care Society (CLPSCS) is passing the torch to the palliative care committee of Age Friendly Cold Lake (AFCL).
CLPCS has advocated and fundraised for improvements to local palliative and hospice care in Cold Lake for the past 30 years. Board member Corinne Hetherington says dissolving the society and turning over its mandate to AFCL makes good sense.
“As it evolved and as Age Friendly has evolved, we just thought rather than having two separate entities we’d be better off working together,” Hetherington said. Some CLPCS members will now join the AFCL palliative care committee to continue their work.
“We’re just basically handing the baton over,” Hetherington said.
Cathy Aust of AFCL says the organization has received home service and palliative care grants through Healthy Aging Alberta and the provincial government. This positions them well to take up the work of CLPCS and expand the range of services to patients.
“We have established a really solid community presence in how we work with seniors, and support seniors in our community who may be underserved,” Aust said.
“So with the palliative care grants, it was just a natural evolution for us. With the Palliative Care Society disbanding, we were approached and we accepted.”
Aust said AFCL struck up their palliative care committee more than a year ago, but worked in the background until CLPCS formally dissolved.
“We didn’t want to create the image in the community that we were duplicating the service,” she said.
Hetherington said she is proud of all CLPCS has achieved over the years, including the renovations to palliative care rooms at Cold Lake hospital. “It’s been wonderful,” she said, “but it’s time for a bit of a change.”
“Palliative care is such a large part of our lives, and so many people don’t talk about it. It’s so important to be able to have those conversations, whether you are somebody who is a caregiver for somebody in palliative care, or whether you’re entering into palliative care yourself, or you’re grieving for somebody who is in palliative care,” she said.
“There’s just there’s so many different things we can do as a community to help people through that and make palliative care better than it used to be; where it was kept quiet and people just didn’t talk about it. And people suffered on their own. We want to be able to support people through and have end of life be as positive and pain-free of an experience—and as healing of an experience for the people around them—as we possibly can.”
Aust agrees. She says AFCL’s grant support will allow them to be even more centred on client needs “and addressing the needs of what seniors are experiencing in Cold Lake and how we can best serve them.”
She makes the distinction between palliative care and hospice care, and she says there is a need to address both.
“Somebody can receive a palliative diagnosis and live for 10 years. Hospice is really six months and under left to end of life,” she said. “It does make a big difference in how we interact with people and taking that stigma away. Just because you have a palliative diagnosis doesn’t mean that people around you need to walk on tippy toes and be afraid to have communication or [not know] what to say or how to say it.”
Aust says an early diagnosis can make it easier for agencies like AFCL to step up and offer help. This can mean transportation to appointments, help with local needs, patient advocacy, or companionship.
“It’s giving caregivers a break,” she said. “There’s so much involved that the earlier the diagnosis, the more services our client can receive— which gives them a better quality of life while they’re travelling that journey.”
Hetherington said she is satisfied with the work CLPCS has done, and happy to see it will continue and grow under AFCL. But she admits there’s a tinge of sadness over closing the book on the Society.
“I’m a little bit sad to hand that over, but at the same time I’m super excited,” she said.
“It’s almost like a refresh, so it’s a good thing. So often I’ve been involved in other societies. And it’s the same people, and we just kind of run out of steam or volunteers or new ideas. It’s just really cool to see these guys take that up.
“Thank you to all the people that have been involved in the Palliative Care Society. Their passion has been fantastic,” Hetherington said.
“They love people, and that’s why they do it.”
