Manitoulin Lodge engaged local businesses to donate prizes to help raise funds for a raffle to buy a sleep chair to be used for families of residents receiving palliative care. Items donated to the home are pictured above.

Teamwork helps enhance families’ palliative-care experience
Manitoulin Lodge has new sleep chair, thanks to effort sparked by PSWs
Monday, October 15, 2012 -- Deron Hamel
Family members of Manitoulin Lodge residents receiving palliative care will now be more comfortable during their stays at the home, thanks to two compassionate staff members.

Manitoulin Lodge activation director Gloria Hall is commending Brenda Dittmar and Ashleen Hawco, both personal support workers at the Gore Bay long-term care home, for orchestrating a fundraiser that helped buy a sleep chair for the families of residents receiving palliative care to use during their stays.

The home, which is on Manitoulin Island, has no palliative-care room, so residents receive end-of-life care in their suites. Dittmar and Hawco, who both work on the night shift, saw a need for something that would make time spent at the home easier for families of residents receiving palliative care, and they decided a special chair was the answer.

“We would always have to drag a chair in the rooms for families, so they thought it would be nice to get a special chair,” Hall tells the Morning Report.

It all began with the PSWs contacting local businesses for donations that would be used in a raffle they were organizing. With Gore Bay being a small, tightly-knit community, many businesses were happy to oblige, says Hall.

Hall, who joined Dittmar and Hawco in the project, notes raffle prizes, which amounted to about $2,500, included everything from gift certificates for oil changes to hair-care products.

Additionally, Hall, Dittmar and Hawco organized a tea and bake sale with all proceeds going towards buying the sleep chair, which folds out into a single bed and was specially made in the U.S. and shipped to Manitoulin Lodge.

Hall says while Dittmar and Hawco did a lot of the initial legwork to get the fundraising project moving, it was a large-scale collaboration that contributed to the success.

“It was residents helping, and staff and volunteers and families and the community helping, so it was just a really good show of teamwork,” says Hall.

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