Hospice Counsellor

**About the **Organization**
Heart House Hospice is a non-profit, volunteer based organization providing support to people living with a life-threatening or terminal illness and their families. It is our mission to provide compassion, support and advocacy that lessens the distress of terminal illness and loss on individuals, families and the community. Our continuum of support programs include hospice counselling, spiritual care, HUUG (Help Us Understand Grief) Children’s program, Social Connextion (an afternoon program), health and wellness education, bereavement and will soon be grown to include a guest home and beds. We serve over 1,000 individuals a year who are living with a life-limiting illness and additionally their family members and loved ones in the Mississauga and Brampton area.
We are currently looking to add a Hospice Counsellor to our growing team.
**About the Opportunity**
In this role, you will provide supportive counselling with compassion, dignity and respect to
Individuals with a terminal illness and an anticipated prognosis of less than 12 months and their families. Most often, listening will be your primary role, along with answering questions, providing support and guidance on unresolved issues and helping person’s served cope with their fear of dying. You will also work in collaboration with other service providers and community resources to ensure a well rounded care plan.
**Key Responsibilities**
- Providing psychosocial support, education and information to individuals with a palliative or life-limiting illness and their family/caregivers, most often in a home setting
- Completing intake process, which includes taking all necessary steps to prepare for a home visit, completing assessments and developing and maintaining a comprehensive care plan
- Providing care coordination services through regular follow up with persons served and their families to identify and address changing needs
- Connecting persons served to external services and partners to address/meet plan of care
- Consulting, debriefing and supporting program volunteers
- Maintaining ongoing consultation and collaboration with community partners to ensure continuity and quality care
- Attending hospital rounds and palliative resource team meetings as relevant/required
- Acting as liaison with community resources;
referring and transitioning individuals and families to community resources for ongoing support
- Maintaining timely documentation of all visits and interactions in the database
- Participating in the development of internal/external policy, procedure and quality improvement initiatives
- Sharing resources, skills, knowledge and experiences with others to promote learning
- Participating in all Heart House Hospice functions
- Other duties as assigned
**Qualifications and Experience**
- A minimum of a Bachelor Degree in Social Work or equivalent work experience
- Regulated to provide psychotherapy through membership in the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) or OCSWSSW (Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers)
- 5years experienceworking in palliative care or community environment
- Comfortable and able to initiate discussion around end of life issues and work with individuals at end of life
- Sound knowledge of and experience working with community resources
- Experience working with and supporting program volunteers
- Compassionate, patient, and sensitive with strong listening skills
- Experience working with computers, databases and Microsoft Office programs (i.E. outlook, PowerPoint)
- Ability to organize and prioritize
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- Ability to work independently and within a team
- Committed to protecting persons served privacy and confidentiality
- A drivers’ license and access to a car is required
- Fluency in more than one language would be an asset
Heart House Hospice is an equal opportunity employer, and we are committed to building an inclusive, diverse, accessible and respectful workplace that is representative of the communities that we serve.
Please inform us if you require any accommodations during the hiring process. We thank all applicants in advance however, only those under consideration will be contacted.