Hospice Of Santa Barbara Inc

Patient care serviceshsb's patient care services team of professional social workers, care coordinators, spiritual care counselor, and volunteers strive to ensure clients receive precisely the emotional, spiritual and practical support they need. Individualized care coordination for clients can begin with the diagnosis of an illness and extend into survivorship or end of life bereavement.patient care services continues to provide up to four levels of careunder the "continuum of care" established in the spring of 2014: caremanagement (for the newly diagnosed patient who may recover from their illness); palliative care management (for those in treatment but not expected to recover); anticipatory grief (for the loved ones and/or caregivers of a patient living with life threatening illness); and bereavement caremanagement (for the surviving loved one after the death of a patient).our 109 active volunteers provided an annual total of 3,385 hoursvolunteered to our community. Patient care volunteers offered respiteto caregivers and improve quality of life for patients and caregiverswith thoughtful companionship, respite care, help with household chores and errands, and assisting with transportation to and from medical appointments. No one dies alone (noda) volunteers provide a reassuring presence to actively dying patients in our community living in nursing homes who would otherwise be alone. Noda volunteers provide patients with that most valuable of human gifts: a dignified death. In 2024, hsb continued collaborations with various community partners to deliver crates of fresh food meals for food insecure patients & families and low-income seniors. Hsb also established an mou with starfish connection, providing in-kind quality of life grants (up to $1,500) to ease the financial burden of those living with illness.

Community Education & EngagementHSBs community education program seeks to engage and empower people with information on aging, illness, dying, death, and bereavement. We offer a variety of educational opportunities including, but not limited to: on site workplace presentations, on-site community organization presentations, visiting lectures, workshops, staff/volunteer support training & discussion groups. Over the past three years, we have focused heavily on bringing education and awareness to the community around Advance Care Planning through Get It Done SB! (English initiative) and Mi Regalo (Spanish initiative). Together we have completed over 1000 Advance Directives, partnered with over 70 community organizations, trained over 30 volunteers to help us spread the message, and launched a community wide PR campaign. In 2024 we successfully piloted an embedded strategy with SBNC and County Public Health Neurology Clinic, placing staff and volunteers inside the clinic to better reach an older and sick demographic. We also diversified our medical referral partners to include Santa Barbara Artificial Kidney Center and Cottage Health Sepsis Department. We continue to actively seek new partners and have warm leads including American Indian Health Services, Tri County Regional Center, and Cottage Health Congestive Heart Failure Clinic.