PG Hospice

New pilot program coming to Prince George Hospice

Jan 30, 2025 | 5:37 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – January is Alzheimers Awareness Month in British Columbia, and as the month comes to an end the Prince George Hospice Palliative Care Society announced a new initiative to further support those with Alzheimers or dementia, as Alzheimers is a subcategory of dementia. The Society is participating in the University of British Columbia’s NAV-CARE Compassionate Dementia Inclusive Community Initiative, a pilot project aimed at further supporting those impacted by dementia. This is not the Society’s first time involved with NAC-CARE, but this time the focus is solely on dementia.

“About five years ago we did NAV-CARE where we introduced volunteers into the home to help people that maybe have a chronic illness or end of life. Now, what they’re doing is they’re focused primarily on dementia and supporting people going through that journey. We have been privileged to be asked to support this pilot program,” said the Hospice Society’s Executive Director Donna Flood.

This program is volunteer focused with the aim enhance support for people living with dementia and their caregivers-partners, helping to create a compassionate, inclusive community where everyone feels supported and empowered. Another huge aspect of the pilot program is getting feedback from the community on what they feel is needed to further improve care.

“We’re looking to the community to find out: what are the gaps, what are people living with dementia, those that care for them, think are the gaps? What are the things they need for us at hospice? It really is about quality of life while people are living, keeping people at home as long as possible, Flood said.

“We really just want to ease the burden. I think that’s pretty much the mandate of everything we do at hospice, whether it’s caring for people at the end of life in our house or in our home hospice program or our grief program, it’s easing the burden of people and however that looks like for them,” Flood continued.

This pilot program comes at a time where the need for more dementia care is growing. According to the Society’s Community Programs Team Lead Laurie De Croos, more than 85,000 people live with dementia in B.C., and by 2050 it’s expected to be as many as 247,000 people. De Croos hopes this pilot program will help support the thousands impacted address the challenges of either living with dementia or living with someone who has dementia.

“The person with dementia might be feeling grief and loss, the loss of themself, of who they were before. And then the care partner or caregiver and family members are also feeling the impact of grief and loss of who the person was and trying to get used to this new normal. So with this, the health care program, we’re hoping to have initiatives that will help support not only people living with dementia, but also care partners,” De Croos explained.

If the pilot program is successful, not only will it be fully launched, Flood hopes to take the same concept and apply it to many other areas.

“Ultimately, we want to scale it into something for people with other chronic diseases, not just dementia,” Flood said.

The Hospice Palliative Care Society launched a survey on its website to learn more about community needs, and it invites anyone impacted by dementia or anyone in care services to fill it out on the Society’s website.

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