By Jolene Ogle
IT LOOKS like the wider Sunshine Coast community will be the winner after the almost six-month feud between the Sunshine Hospice board and former volunteers ended on Saturday 8 October.
The local region could now get two hospices after the Sunshine Hospice Board, who formerly operated the Doonan palliative facility, said they expected to announce a partnership to create a private hospital palliative care facility.
The group of former hospice volunteers, now known as the Katie Rose Cottage Committee (KRC Committee), has also announced big plans for a community-based, volunteer-run facility.
The KRC Committee appears to have been beaten in the special meeting that was called to hold a vote of no confidence in the current board but, while the final voting outcome has not been officially released to the media or public, committee spokesperson Carol Raye said it didn’t matter because “we’re all winners today”.
“We still win today as an organisation. Today, I announce the start of the Katie Rose Cottage. It’s going to be a new charity and it will have nothing to do with (the Sunshine Hospice board). It will have its own money,” she said.
Pledge letters have already been sent out into the community and Ms Raye said the committee will continue negotiations to buy the Doonan site where the original community hospice facility was.
“What I can promise you today is that without those board members, and under a new board and a new charity called Katie Rose Cottage, we will bring this community a new hospice,” she said.
“We will bring outreach services. We will bring counselling services and we will do it as quickly as possible. We ask all of the community to come on board and support us.”
Original Katie Rose Cottage co-founder Sue Story said she was pleased the legacy of the community hospice facility would continue.
“We will care for the dying in our community from now,” she said.
Meanwhile, in a statement to the media prior to the meeting, Sunshine Hospice chairman Frank Lewins said the board would move ahead with plans for a private hospital facility, meaning Sunshine Coast residents could have two hospices instead of none.
“The Sunshine Hospice Ltd Board intends to reopen the Sunshine Hospice with the support of the whole Sunshine Coast community when sufficient funds are available to allow continuous operations without the threat of another closure,” he said.
“It is the board’s intention to reopen a hospice that is loving and caring and provides out guests with a serene and peaceful place for them to spend their last days.
“A reopened hospice will support the whole of the Sunshine Coast and Hinterland community as it has done for the last four years.”
