Fr. Matthew Durham touted the end-of-life care advancements made at the Saint Elizabeth (SE) Foundation’s Journey Home Hospice since its 2018 inception during a Lectures in Catholic Experience presentation at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ont., on April 23.

The executive director of hospice palliative care and community development for SE Health shared how the organization’s Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice-President, Nancy Lefebre, had a vision of creating a new benchmark of service for individuals experiencing homelessness or structural vulnerability. She insisted that the hospice, situated just five minutes away from St. Michael’s Cathedral Basilica in Toronto’s Garden District, start with just four beds.

“Let's start with a four-bed model because you only get one chance to do this right,” recalled Durham during the lecture. “We wanted to go slowly. We wanted to, even though the need was great, and we know there are lots of people in need. We want to do this right, and we want to learn from the patients as we're going. We want their feedback. We want to be able to develop the gold standard in care for this population.”

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After weathering the COVID-19 pandemic and completing renovations to the space thanks to a $1 million donation from the Iacobelli family of Leamington, Ont., the foundation eyed launching a satellite hospice in Windsor to demonstrate the successful program in Toronto could be replicated.

The three-bed facility was launched in 2022. Additionally, a valuable partnership was struck with Assisted Living Southwestern Ontario, enabling the hospice to learn about what is required to provide quality end-of-life care for individuals with cognitive or physical disabilities.

Now there are 10 hospice beds and three chronic hospice beds at the main Toronto location. The interdisciplinary care team includes registered nurses, registered practical nurses, personal support workers, social workers, complementary therapists and spiritual care providers. Additionally, there is 24/7 access to physician support, and all staff and volunteers are trained, per the hospice website, in “trauma-informed, culturally safe and harm-reducing approaches to care designed to meet the needs of our patient population.”

Durham shared with the Register how he wanted to inform his audience of how the Saint Elizabeth Foundation National Centre for Equity and Innovation in End-of-Life Care, launched last December, will provide expertise to outside organizations on adopting the Journey Home model.

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“We’ll keep what we have going with our headquarters in Toronto and our satellite in Windsor,” said Durham, the Diocese of Hamilton’s delegate to the health-care community. “But now we’ll become a teaching and learning facility, or an innovation hub, where we can help other organizations that want to provide this specialized end-of-life care in their community.

“(It could be) an existing hospice program, hospital, palliative care unit or other community organizations that want to learn from us. We can help them with toolkits, education and consulting and help them provide this level of care in their own community.”

Regarding the timing of this new centre’s launch, Durham suggested “we’re at a point now where people realize there needs to be more access so that people actually have choices (for care). Because in order to have informed consent, you must have choices.”

A goal of the new foundation is to help entities devise solutions to ensure access for groups that have historically been overlooked by the system, such as the homeless, individuals with cognitive disabilities and Indigenous groups, among others. Another aim is advocating for centres to adopt a holistic approach to end-of-life care.

Durham, who operates by the maxim that human dignity should be honoured at every stage of life, said he is inspired and energized by the work he gets to do and the company he keeps each day.

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“I always talk about how our staff and volunteers have a vocation within a vocation,” he said. “You have to first feel called and be skilled in providing good end-of-life care, and that's hard enough. Then you have to feel called to serve specialized populations such as those experiencing homelessness. When we find that call within a call in our staff and our volunteers, they bring a special gift to our organization. I have the privilege of leading this group of folks, and their energy and their dedication and their compassion are just electrifying.”

Watch Durham’s presentation at St. Jerome’s by visiting the university’s YouTube account.