Services

Family Support

The Experience of facing a terminal illness brings families into often unfamiliar territory beyond purely medial aspects. The North Shore Hospice Family Support Team are all professionally trained and qualified to bring a range of skills to helping patients and families identify and explore these issues.

Patients and families sometimes find themselves wondering about how it is that emotional responses vary so widely amongst family members in different situations. Some family members find it more difficult than others to talk about the illness or its effect on relationships and family life. For others, tried and true ways of working through the difficulties that are part of all relationships often need new approaches.

As illness progresses, maintaining a sense of personal power, in the face of what often feels like an increasing loss of control and independence, can become a daily struggle. Previous experiences of loss or grief may be felt with a renewed intensity, and personal beliefs and spiritual resources may be challenged, or become more important and real. Often coping and communicating with visitors, and sometimes with their well intentioned but unhelpful advice, can become a challenge in itself.

Amongst all of this, we often have unexamined expectations about how we should cope. Sometimes, as caregivers, we need to find new ways of spreading responsibilities amongst other family members, allowing others to share the load, and taking care of ourselves.

In all of these areas, the counsellors, social workers and chaplain in our Family Support Team are here to help.