Tuesday 25th May 2021. ABC Radio’s Drive program. ABC Drive host Annie Gaffney’s interview with Little Haven Palliative Care CEO Sue Manton.
AG: (00:00)
… Little Haven Palliative Care Incorporated in Gympie. Hi Sue, tell us a little bit about Little Haven, it’s a community driven model of Palliative Care I understand, how does it work exactly?
SM: (00:10)
Good afternoon Annie. Little Haven was established over 40 years ago by Phyllis Little, who is the founder which is where the Little comes from. The idea was, she lost her husband and daughter within a number of weeks of each other and realized that there needs to be better care of the dying. So she came back and made it her life mission to put a better network of support around patients facing a similar situation to her family, and from that we have grown a model of care that I think very much meets everything that Shyla was describing, it’s holistic care. Care of the, you know, psychological, spiritual, complex symptom management, emotional, all of the things, and looking after the carer as well. So I think the best sorts of Palliative Care come from a community desire, a compassionate community wishing to empower family to enable their loved ones to remain in the place of their choosing and to have the support that they need 24/7.
AG (01:20)
Do you also offer in facility care as well as home care?
SM (01:26)
We don’t. Initially Phyl Little’s idea was to build a stand alone Hospice, and there are some beautiful Hospices around Queensland, but we are really offering our hospice in the home because A) we didn’t get the funding that we needed at the beginning, and along the way realized that a lot more people could be cared for in that environment for the money that we had available. Currently Little Haven is caring for 104 patients out in the community across a 70-kilometre radius from our organization and probably if we had a Hospice, you would be looking at 4 to 6 beds.
AG: (02:05)
Yes
SM (02:06)
We do have 2 rooms we have built up in the hospital, at, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, historically we built those 2 rooms, so families can stay with their loved ones in there. But it’s still quite a clinical environment, but, they’re beautifully cared for in there as well. If families are unable to provide support at home or patients don’t have dedicated carers, we can look after them at home for as long as possible, but at some point they may need to come into hospital for those last final days of life.
AG (02:39)
What’s the level of demand like for your services?
SM (02:43)
We are being hammered at the moment, because we have drawn so much from our community over the years Annie, we have been needing to fund our service so heavily up until recent times, we just had a wonderful injection of financial support from Queensland Health, but we have always taken it to be our responsibility to be very responsive to our community needs. Gympie is in a very high, has a higher than above Queensland average aging population demographic. And I think also at the moment there has been some problems with other aged care providers not having adequate support, so we are getting a lot of additional admissions. In the last 18 days we had something like 28 admissions, so we always try and respond to those needs, we’ve always, we try not to turn people away particularly if they’re in those, needing to be supported for the last weeks of life, so far we manage. We do have a very strong commitment from our board to always try to just expand our services to meet the needs of our community.
AG (03:54)
You also work with a lot of volunteers at Little Haven, so how many people have you got volunteering and what kind of roles do they have?
SM (04:01)
So we have about 170 volunteers and some of those are you know, very rarely do we see them, but we know they are there if we need them, but some of them are quite dedicated doing various roles every day. We use our volunteers in a clinical setting, we have respite volunteers who will go out and help families, just sort of work in with that family and do little errands for them, maybe sit with the patient while the carer wants to go out or you know, sit with the carer to give them some companionship as well, or someone who is unwell, go and collect things from the shop for them, make meals or various other things. We also have volunteers who help in the administrative area, just keep costs down, we’ve got complementary therapists; we have a very strong program of therapies like Massage, Reiki, Bowen Therapy, all sorts of things and our therapists provide those without charge to the organization or the patient. They’re all fully qualified and keep their registration up to date with their professional body but they volunteer their time. One of those therapists for example has been with us for about 11 years and he just clicked over 2,000 massages.
AG (05:20)
Gee
SM (05:21)
Pretty impressive and giving up 1 day a week. We have obviously a huge fundraising contingent of volunteers as well and so we’ve got a marketplace which is a license to print money, apparently. it’s really lovely, we are recycling lots of things through the community and we are also raising lots of money to support our patients at home. A lot of our volunteers come back into our service as a way of giving back. We might have cared for their loved one and that model I particularly love, because I think they’re given a new sense of purpose, build up their social support system and basically a reason to get out of bed in the morning, at times, you know.
AG (06:08)
Yeah, I know Sue, that you said at times, that you, we are almost out of time, but you said that you have received funding from Queensland Health, which has kept you going, but if you could have access to more funding, which Palliative Care QLD is calling for, what would you do with that money, how would it help your service?
SM (06:28)
I think, I’m very grateful for the level of support we’ve got, I think Queensland Health is focusing on Community Based Palliative Care and the benefits of that and realize that it’s actually a cost neutral model, there’s been lots of modelling done about that. So, I’ve advocated strongly for that funding. Right at the moment we are well positioned, with our community chip in, and I think it’s very important that communities do buy in to care of the dying, I think that’s a great model, so for now we’re quite good, I just need a commitment from QLD Health, and I believe it will happen, that as our service needs more support it will get it. But what I am advocating for and working with lots of communities around us, is to stretch that Community Based Palliative Care Network service further than just our “lucky lottery”, as you say. So you know Fraser Coast as Shyla mentioned is building a Hospice up there, Rockhampton is looking at building or has a very strong case before Queensland Health to build a Community Based Palliative Care service, and I know QLD Health is interested in it. I know they are addressing it and while we always welcome more money I think it’s great that we are moving in that direction. It is Community Based Palliative Care and it should be available 24/7, so for organizations that are prepared to put their hand up to do that, I think they will get a good hearing from Queensland Health.
AG (07:52)
Good to speak with you Sue, thank you.
SM (7:55)
Ok thanks. Bye.
AG (7:56)
Sue Manton is the CEO of Little Haven Palliative Care Incorporated. It’s a not-for-profit Community Based Palliative Care Service in the Gympie area
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