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EXTERNAL RESOURCES
Hospice Palliative Care Ontario
The Palliative Care Ontario website is a provincial association of hospices and palliative care providers, professionals, and volunteers throughout Ontario. This association strives to provide access for everyone in Ontario to quality palliative care by encouraging and helping develop the field of hospices.
Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association
The Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association is the national voice for Hospice Palliative Care in Canada. This association works towards advancing quality end-of-life care as well as public education and awareness.
South West Hospice Palliative Care Network
The South West Hospice Palliative Care Network provides information and resources about Hospice and Palliative Care Services in the South West Local Health Integration Network.
The Canadian Virtual Hospice provides support and personalized information about palliative and end-of-life care to patients, family members, health care providers, researchers and educators.
Ontario Palliative Care Network
The Ontario Palliative Care Network is a partnership of community stakeholders, health services providers and health systems planners who are developing a coordinated and standardized approach for delivering hospice palliative care services in Ontario.
Palliative Care Toolkit for Indigenous Communities
The Palliative Care Toolkit for Indigenous Communities is a website with resources and reference material for First Nations, Metis, and Inuit families and communities. This resource is used to help support people with cancer who have palliative care needs.
This website provides different News, Views, and Inspiration about palliative care from around the world.
This website is a resource for people of different cultural backgrounds to honour their culture, spirituality, and traditions. Individuals can share their stories of wisdom about living with serious illness, end of life and grief support.
National Hospice Palliative Care Organization
The National Hospice Palliative Care Organization is the leading organization representing hospice and palliative care providers in the United States and offers resources for palliative and hospice care professionals, as well as individuals and families dealing with a life limiting illness.
The VON Grey Bruce is part of Canada’s only, national, non-for-profit, charitable home and community care organization. This organization provides in-home care from nurses, therapists, and other health care providers.
End-of-Life Care in Grey Bruce (southwesthealthline.ca)
The End-of-Life Care in Grey Bruce website has various resources listed that cover a broad range of local services available including Hospice Palliative Care, Care Directives, Bereavement, and programs for Widows and Widowers.
The Way Forward website is an initiative that resulted from the Quality End-of-Life Care Coalition of Canada’s Blueprint for 2010-2020, which identified as a priority that all Canadians should have access to high-quality hospice palliative and end-of-life care. This initiative is a roadmap for an integrated approach to care – helping make changes across the country to ensure we are living well until death.
The End of Life Care website provides links and resources about end-of-life care, including palliative care and medical assistance in dying in Canada.
Grief Recovery Method Institute
The Grief Recovery Method Institute offers different programs to help individuals move forward with their life after significant loss. This is the program that Huron Shores Hospice trained volunteers deliver for grief support.
Kids Grief is a free online resource that helps parents support their children when someone in their life is dying or has died.
Talking with Children About the Cycle of Life and Death - Ages 4+
This free kid kit on dying, death and grief if for any grownup (parent, grandparent, auntie, uncle, friend, etc.) who wants to help their child understand the cycle of life and death. Huron Shores Hospice has the recommended books in this kit for loan to any family who would like to explore this kit further. Please contact us at grief@huronshoreshospice.ca for lending details.
Talking with Children About Terminal Illness and Death - Ages 4+
This free kid kit on dying, death and grief is for any grownup (parent, grandparent, auntie, uncle, friend, etc.) who wants to help their child undersand terminal illness, death and grief. Huron Shores Hospice has the recommended books in this kit for loan to any family who would like to explore this kit further. Please contact us at grief@huronshoreshospice.ca for lending details.
The Bereaved Families of Ontario offers a free service to receive help, support and discuss your experiences and learn about grief with others who have been there. This organization offers a range of individual and group support groups in both open and closed settings.
Ultimate Guide to Grieving Support Resources
This website offers support for various types of situations and provides inspirational quotes for viewers to read.
The MyGrief.ca website is an online resource for those dealing with grief. It provides confidential services that you can participate in from your own home.
Caregiver Support Modules (HPCO)
The Caregiver Support Modules website helps you find the support you need, exactly when you need it. This website provides different resources to assist you regardless of the unique circumstances of your situation.
A Guide to Death Care in Ontario
The Guide to Death Care in Ontario is a resource that informs consumers of their rights and responsibilities when planning funerals, burials, transfer services, or cremation.
The Caring Bridge organization helps individuals keep in touch with family and friends and provide updates about their personal medical journey. It is a safe place where patients and caregivers can turn to after diagnosis, illness, injury, premature birth or any health crisis.
The Post Hope website provides users the tools to create user-friendly, ad free, customizable websites to receive donations, post status updates, photos, and any other relevant information while also allowing them to share updates through email, Facebook, Twitter and other popular social platforms.
As Illness Progresses (from Visiting Nurses of NY)
The Visiting Illness Nurses of NY is the largest non-for-profit home and community based health care organization in the United States. They have designed programs for people to improve their quality of life and reduce the number and length of hospitalizations.
The Ontario Caregiver Organization
(including information about The Ontario Caregiver Helpline for 24/7 support at 1 833-416-2273)
The Ontario Caregiver Organization exists to support Ontario’s 3.3 million caregivers. This resource is to support caregivers by being their one point of access to information, so they have what they need to be successful in their role.
This US based website is a forum for disclosure, recent news, research, and freethinking commentary. Their objective is to create an online community of interdisciplinary providers interested in geriatrics or palliative care, to provide an open forum for the exchange or ideas and disruptive commentary that changes clinical practice and health care policy and to change the world.
Quality End-of-Life Care Coalition of Canada
The CHPCA serves as the Secretariat for the Quality End-of-life Care Coalition of Canada, a group of 35 national organizations dedicated to improving end-of-life care for all Canadians.
Benefits for Parents of Critically Ill Children
The Benefits for Parents of Critically Ill Children will provide parents with information on various benefit options by the Canadian Government for ill children.
The Compassionate Care Benefits provides people with information on various benefit options by the Canadian Government they may be eligible to receive financial assistance when caring for someone who is critically ill.
Odonata Care is a hands on Guide to Caring for the Hospice Patient. The Care Plan: A Path to Comfort for the Hospice Patient booklet has revolutionized the hospice experience by improving the standard of care.
The Speak up Ontario campaign is an initiative of Hospice Palliative Care Ontario to improve awareness of Health Care Consent and Advance Care Planning in the Province of Ontario. This website focuses on providing information, tools, and resources specific to the Ontario legal context.
The International End of Life Doula Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing deeper meaning and greater comfort to dying people and loved ones in the last days of life. Huron Shores Hospice has four INELDA trained doulas available to assist potential residents.
The Conversation Project is a U.S. based public engagement initiative with a goal that is both simple and transformative: to have every person’s wishes for end-of-life care expressed and respected. Please be mindful that Advanced Care Planning documents are different in Ontario.
The Prepare for Your Care organization out of California grew out of a desire to help make medical decision making easier for people and caregivers. It is the result of ongoing research, collaboration, and generous funding. Please be mindful that Advanced Care Planning documents are different in Ontario.
The Best Endings website is a resource to help and support individuals when making personal and medical decisions.
The Organ Donation Ontario is a resource to find information on donating individuals organs after death.
The Legacy Center encourages individuals and organizations to identify and communicate the core values and experiences that have given their lives meaning. The organization provides various services that inform, support and guide individuals through presentations and seminars, coaching and training for individuals and organizations, personal memoirs and life story writing, etc.
The StoryCorps is a platform that focuses on collecting, sharing, and preserving people’s stories; high-quality organizational management; and the care and support of an extraordinary work environment where respect and dignity are paramount.
The StoryWorth website is a platform that asks individuals questions weekly that families may not have thought to ask. The individual then replies with a story that is shared with the family each week. At the end of the year all the stories are bound into a beautiful keepsake book.
The Megilla website is a platform that records videos of individuals sharing a story. This site allows for individuals to record stories and then have these stories forever.
The Willow End-of-Life Planning is a resource where individuals can communicate their priorities and wishes about their health and person care, and your legacy and after-death care planning as well as how you’ll remember it. This service helps reduce anxiety, regret, and conflict. Their hope is to consciously contemplate and connect with others around the reality of your morality to change how people feel about dying.
The Love Your Life to Death website provides information about Yvonne a lady who is working towards changing the conversation around death. On this website you can find her Books, Programs, Blogs, Events, and resources. Each book ordered provides Huron Shores Hospice with a small donation. Just mention Huron Shores Hospice when you order.
The Groundswell Project is a U.S. organization that develops evidence based programs with health organizations, researchers, local government and communities to activate better end of life experiences by empowering community members and increasing knowledge and accessibility to end of life support, services, and resources.
Ontario Funeral Service Association
The Ontario Funeral Service Association is the leader in advocacy and ethical business advancement for the independent and family owned funeral homes in Ontario, providing Members with professional development, support, resources and peer networks.
Bereavement Authority of Ontario
The Bereavement Authority of Ontario administers provisions of the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act 2002 and regulates and supports licensed funeral establishments, cemetery operations, transfer service operators, funeral directors, funeral preplanners, transfer service sales representatives, cemetery sales representatives and cremation sales representatives across Ontario.
Deleting Social Media Accounts
The links below are to special request the removal of an individual who is deceased or medically incapacitated.
The Death Café website assists viewers in finding a Death Café near to them, a guide on how to host your own death café and various resources on how to have “the conversation.”
Ted Talks:
I See Dead People: Dreams and Visions of the Dying | Dr. Christopher Kerr | TEDxBuffalo
This Ted Talk is by Dr. Christopher Kerr where he speaks about near universal experiences he witnesses that often provide comfort and meaning as well as insight into the life led and death anticipated.
What really matters at the end of life | BJ Miller
This Ted Talk is by BJ Miller who is a palliative care physician who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients. This moving talk asks big questions about how we think about death and honor life.
Games:
The Dying to Talk is an online card game that helps people begin the conversation around death and dying.
The Hello game is a conversation game that is an easy, non-threatening way to start a conversation with your family and friends about what matters most to you.
The Death Deck game is a card game you can purchase online and then play with friends and family to have a fun and memorable night of lively conversations with friends and family.
Books:
Talking About Death Won’t Kill You by Dr. Kathy Kortes-Miller ISBN: 978-1-77041-406-8
The book Talking About Death Won’t Kill You by Dr. Kathy Kortes-Miller is the essential handbook to help Canadians navigate personal and medical decisions for the best quality of life for the end of our lives. Huron Shores Hospice provides this book to all our Comfort Care Volunteers as a resource guide.
A Beginner’s Guide to the End by BJ Miller, MD and Shoshana Berger ISBN: 978-1-5011-5716-5
The book A Beginner’s Guide to the End by BJ Miller is a guide that helps you as well as your friends and family through the unfamiliar to-do lists and the emotional and medical choices that often overwhelm us. Again this is U.S. based so please be mindful about the differences in document requirements in Ontario.
Love Your Life To Death by Yvonne Heath ISBN: 978-0-9947896-0-0
The book Love Your Life to Death by Yvonne Heath is a book to help give people a new perspective on life and death. Through heartfelt stories of those who have been deeply impacted by loss and found happiness again, and interviews of professionals who deal with grief, death and dying, you will gain her insightful experiences. Huron Shores Hospice receives a donation from Yvonne for every book ordered that mentions our organization.
Dying to know – Bringing death to life ISBN: 978-1-74066-553-7
The Dying to Know – Bringing Death to Life by Andrew Anastasios is a book that covers subjects such as: planning a personalized funeral, ways to help people who are terminally ill, making an emotional will, organ donation, creating online memorials, opening the conversation with children, things to do before you die, and other topics.
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande ISBN: 9780805095159
This New York Times bestselling book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande complicates, examines, in riveting accounts of medical failure and triumph, how success is achieved in this complex and risk filled profession. In the book Gawande addresses his profession’s ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person’s last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul by Jenkinson, Stephen, Shaw, Dr. Martin ISBN: 9781583949733
The Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul by Stephen Jenkinson is a book that places death at the center of the page and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. Die Wise teaches the skills of dying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well. Die Wise is for those who will fail to live forever.