What exactly is The Living Wish Foundation? The Living Wish Foundation is an organization that provides medically supervised and supported end of life wishes to patients who are facing terminal diagnosis. By doing this, The Living Wish Foundation hopes to assist people who are terminally ill to make their last wish or dreams come true. Providing the patient this wish ultimately enhances their quality of life until they pass on.
Since we are in the Christmas season, it is important to understand how much of an impact that a wish that comes true can have on a terminally ill patient. End of life wishes are not necessarily overly complicated. Sometimes a wish could be a request to visit their home for the last time, go to a Toronto Maple Leafs game, or to celebrate and spend one last Christmas or birthday a few weeks earlier. The people who work at Living Wish Foundation have found that patients last request have often been something simple and easy to achieve. This Christmas, try to reach out to The Living Wish Foundation to donate your time to help someone achieve their last dream. Granting a last wish to a terminally ill patient can be the most powerful feeling to any care team. These wishes provide joy to the patient and one last memorable experience for the patient’s family and friends to sustain them in their grief. If you want to give the ultimate Christmas gift this holiday season, I suggest you help make a wish come true for a terminal ill patient. This will be a Christmas gift that they will never forget. Go out there, help those in need, and make an impact. Let’s give everyone the Christmas they deserve.
Marco Sanfilippo
Marketing Specialist/Recreation Assistant
Many Long-Term Care Homes across Ontario have established a dedicated family council within their homes. In these Family Councils, members have successfully set aside goals and aspirations to help improve the quality of life for their loved ones within the Long-Term Care Home. A Family Council is an organized, self-led, and self-determining group of people composed of family and friends of the residents living in the Long-Term Care Homes. The main purpose of a Family Council is to improve the quality of life for Long-Term Care residents and to give families and friends a forum for sharing their experiences, leanings, and other valuable information within the home. A Family Council works together with residents’ family members, friends, and the Long-Term Care Home to identify and resolve any issues that affect the resident’s quality of life.
Here are some examples of what Family Council have accomplished with other Ontario Long-Term Care Homes in the past:
Members of one Family Council advocated for new doors in the Alzheimer unit to improve resident safety.
Air-conditioning was installed in one Home at a Family Council’s recommendation.
Family Council worked with a local municipality to include curb ramps around the building of their Long-Term Care Home so residents using wheelchairs could leave the property.
Some of the benefits of having a Family Council in your Long-Term Care Home is that it allows families to give each other ongoing mutual support and encouragement by sharing thoughts and feelings with others who also have relatives in a Long-Term Care Home. Not only that, a Family Council provides an opportunity to become knowledgeable about the Long-Term Care Home’s operations, policies, and rules. This can be especially helpful for families of new residents in the home.
Starting in June 2019, Bay Haven Care Community began a Family Council. So far, our Family Council is small, but we would like to increase the number of participants as much as possible! Each Family Council at a Long-Term Care Home is unique to that individual Home; however, they all share the same goals and aspirations, and that is to provide additional care for your loved ones.
To promote and raise awareness for Bay Haven’s Family Council, we will be hosting a tea social on Wednesday, October 16th, 2019 at 6:00 PM at the Recreation Room in the Long-Term Care side of Bay Haven. At this social, there will be a PowerPoint presentation explaining more about Family Council and what it means to us. We will also be giving a tutorial on how to navigate the Bay Haven Facebook Page. This social will be a great way to introduce potential new members our Family Council at Bay Haven. At this social, you will be learning more about our goal to create a well-established Family Council at Bay Haven, our mission, and the date and time for the next upcoming meeting. We highly recommend and encourage all current resident family members to attend our event.
If you have any relatives in Bay Haven’s Long-Term Care Home and would like to volunteer your time to be part of our Family Council, please contact Bay Haven Care Community at (705)-445-6501 and ask for either April Lawson (Recreation Manager) or Marco Sanfilippo (Marketing Specialist) for more information. Do not forget to attend our tea social to meet us and learn more about Family Council at Bay Haven.
NOTE: Since Bay Haven is under an outbreak, we may have to postpone our social to another date. We will update everyone once the outbreak is gone.
Thank you,
Marco Sanfilippo – Marketing Specialist/Recreation Assistant.
Bay Haven Care Community Residents Enjoying Their Ice Cream.
Every year, Bay Haven Care Community collaborates with the Collingwood Ice Cream Company to provide FREE ice cream to all the residents right at their home. The recreation team and volunteers work together to bring all residents outside to enjoy their free ice cream right in front of the Collingwood Ice Cream Company truck so that each resident can individually choose which flavoured ice cream they would like. Some of the flavoured options included were chocolate, vanilla, blueberry cheesecake, and cookie dough. After the resident chooses their ice cream flavour, they would then decide weather they wanted their ice cream served in a cone or in a bowl. The recreation team also provided some additional tables, chairs, and umbrellas for shade and protection against the sun. This collaboration between Bay Haven and the Collingwood Ice Cream Company is a great way to have two local companies come together to provide residents with local, delicious, Collingwood ice cream.
Additionally, every other Wednesday throughout the month of August, the Bay Haven Care Community recreation team provides residents with their very own personalized ice cream trolley! Recreation assistants Marco and Alivya will dress up wearing ice cream uniforms and then proceed to go to each individual resident with a trolley filled with ice cream and delicious toppings such as chocolate, caramel, strawberry, and sprinkles! To add effect, the recreation team attaches two ice cream trolley signs on both sides of the trolley, as well as having ice cream trolley music playing in loop from our iPad. The residents get really excited when they hear the ice cream music, just like anyone else would! The ice cream trolley begins its route in the Long-Term Care side of Bay Haven and then continues to proceed through the Retirement Home side. The residents absolutely love receiving ice cream directly at their front door of their rooms! Here at Bay Haven Care Community, we acknowledge that summertime is ice cream time, and the residents love it!
Marco Sanfilippo — Marketing Specialist/Recreation Assistant.
Bay Haven Staff Members Ready To Participate In Their Adopt-A-Road Program.
What exactly is the Adopt-A-Road Program? The Town of Collingwood Adopt-a-Road Program is a private/public partnership program where environmental conscious citizens, community organizations, businesses, and other industries make a personal contribution to a cleaner and more beautiful roads in Collingwood. Garbage and other roadside litter can be very unappealing to every Collingwood resident and tourist. Not only that, roadside garbage is harmful to the environment, creates pollution, and completely takes away from Collingwood’s beautiful outdoor scenery. In order to change this, Bay Haven Care Community participates in the Adopt-A-Road Program.
The Adopt-A-Road Program is a public service program for volunteers to pick up litter along certain roads in Collingwood. Every volunteer or organization is assigned a road that they attend twice a year to pick up all garbage found on that road. Bay Haven Care Community’s assigned road is the Pretty Rive Parkway. Bay Haven staff members gather together at the end of their workday to help and clean up the road. Since Pretty River Parkway is one of the larger roads in Collingwood, Bay Haven staff members gather for dinner at a local Collingwood restaurant after their hard work. We are very fortunate enough to live in a Town that offers a program like this that aims to make Collingwood, and the world, a better place to live in. The Adopt-A-Road Program is a great way to help clean up your community, and these days, it is essential that we keep our environment as clean and healthy as possible for our future.
