Hospice of Santa Barbara (HSB)

Bereavement services: counseling sessions at Hospice of Santa Barbara (hsb) allow individuals and families to heal emotionally. Grief is attachment. People can learn to tolerate their emotional experiences with productive expression. Emotional and spiritual healing is the ultimate goal for those coping with the loss of a loved one. Our bereavement services include counseling, support groups, art workshops, therapeutic poetry and holiday workshops for every age group. These services aim to serve any individual or family coping with loss.during 2022, hsb served 1,738 unduplicated clients. Hsb provided 7,078 bereavement counseling sessions, including 1,658 children & family services sessions. Children and family services presents support that works for different age groups by figuring out their needs and methods of moving forward in life. Children may have a hard time tolerating their emotional experiences. They're learning to regulate their emotions. Meanwhile, adults may have expectations of the world that are unmet and challenged by death or illness.hsb provides comprehensive professional individual and group counseling to children, teens, adults and families affected by life-threatening illness or grieving the death of a loved one. Hsb has been asked to be a constant presence on all south county junior high schools and re-established presence in the two continuation high schools. This program is instrumental in creating the base for successful emotional growth that forms the building blocks needed for life-long success. High school students in our groups no longer utilize destructive coping skills relieving our community of the negative trickle down effects such as crime, unemployment, higher school dropout rates, and substance abuse.also, in 2022 hsb continued its participation in the youthwell coalition on school campuses throughout Santa Barbara, carpinteria, and goleta and also Santa ynez high school. Hsb was also present to provide debriefings/in-services in lompoc, carpinteria, and Santa Barbara. We are in the 23rd year of a program we developed called, "i have a friend," in which a child who has lost a parent or sibling is matched with an adult (whom we train and screen) who had a similar loss as a child. Some of these relationships last more than five years and are life-changing for both the mentor and the mentee.

Hsb's 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 lecturers, workshops, staff/volunteer support training, & discussion groups. In 2022 the community education program engaged in advanced care planning efforts, with specific focus geared toward the senior & latinx communities, with volunteers contributing to the completion of several hundred acp documents. Additionally in 2022, we delivered over 1,000 meals to pcs patients in collaboration with community partners and held community education debriefs at the Santa Barbara public library and heritage house in both english & spanish.

Hsb's patient care services team of professional social workers, counselors 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 and end of life bereavement.patient care services continues to provide up to three levels of care under the "continuum of care" established in the spring of 2014: care management (for the newly diagnosed patient who may recover from their illness); anticipatory grief (for the loved ones and/or caregivers of a patient living with life threatening illness); and bereavement care management (for the surviving loved one after the death of a patient). During 2022, 5,999 social work and spiritual care sessions were provided.in 2022, hsb continued the initiative with Santa Barbara neighborhood clinics (sbnc) to outreach within individual clinic settings. As a result of this relationship, hsb exceeded its goal of 75 referrals with 105 referrals. Additionally, hsb continued the mi vida, mi voz initiative. The mi vida, mi voz initiative's focus to address the needs of the latino community by bringing critical community resource and education information in spanish. Hsb's current focus is to provide advance care planning education information.our 115 active volunteers provided an annual total of 3,550 hours volunteered to our community. Patient care volunteers offered respite to caregivers and improve quality of life for patients and caregivers with thoughtful companionship, respite care, help with household chores and errands, and assisting with transportation to and from medical appointments. Reiki services are offered through complementary therapy service volunteers. 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 2022, 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 transportation services to and from bereavement sessions for patients unable to transport themselves.