In disarray

Mark Larratt-Smith and Bev Campbell listened to questions and comments for more than an hour on Monday night.

Hospice chair, executive director resign in wake of lingering questions about transparency

An atmosphere of frustration and unanswered questions has left the board of Hospice Prince Edward with just two members.

The interim executive director, Angela Jodoin, along with two of the dwindling rank of board members, president Linda Middleton and secretary Debbie Macdonald- Moynes, stepped down yesterday morning. This follows a public meeting demanding changes to the hospice board. None of the board members attended.

Philip Bender, a lawyer representing the hospice foundation and corporation, says a meeting held last night would determine how to proceed, both to keep services up and running and to rebuild the hospice board and instate a new executive director.

Jodoin had recently stepped down as board member to become interim director after Nancy Parks, who had held the position for six years, quit last month.

Parks was not alone. The list of board members had shrunk considerably since last year. With a membership of nine at the end of 2014, the board is now down to past president Birgit Langwisch and treasurer Mary Camp. A month ago, the board had triple that number.

“The remaining board members are focusing on rebuilding or recruiting members for the board,” says Bender. “That will be the one priority. The second priority will be ensuring that temporary measures are put in place to ensure that the services and operations of Hospice Prince Edward continue at this time.”

That the organization is broken was evident at Monday’s meeting. Volunteers, donors and community members were asking questions—good, legitimate concerns— and were met with silence.

The hall at the Prince Edward Community Centre was full. About 250 people gathered to learn more and speak up about hospice. This included the mayor and more than half of council—not there as politicians but as concerned members of their community.

It included MPP Todd Smith, who assured the crowd that upcoming provincial legislation about charitable organizations would force the hospice board to become more transparent.

It included a force of hospice volunteers, ranging from those who have been giving their time for decades to new recruits, all equally concerned. One young woman who had just finished her training as a hospice volunteer asked, through tears, how they could trust a hospice board unwilling to be open and present.

No one could answer their questions. No one from the board was there to do so.

This meeting was a culmination of changes over the past two years. In 2010, when the hospice foundation was established, a series of bylaws were written. One of those by-laws stated that any individual who had contributed time or resources to the hospice and expressed interest could become a voting member.

In late 2013, those by-laws were changed, with a new by-law that stated only past and present board members could be members of hospice. This was ratified in a meeting that took place on a stormy evening in early January, 2014 (during the winter of the ice storm), where only four nonboard members were present.

As Mark Larratt-Smith, a past president and head writer of the initial by-laws said, the board could make a decision, go out for coffee, and come back and ratify it. The board and membership was one and the same. The reason for the change is unclear, but the consequence was disastrous.

What followed was a year without any communication from the board, which now could make its own rules without consulting those who didn’t realize they were no longer members.

It was a year without open board meetings and without an annual general meeting. It was a year in which decisions were made without any transparency.

One of those decisions was to reduce nursing staff hours from 24 to 20. That means there would be four hours in a day in which no nursing staff would be available to a hospice client in a medical emergency. To volunteers, who are forbidden from offering medical assistance, and to family members, this seemed a horrifying prospect.

This was articulated by Reverend Audrey Whitney, a chaplain and hospice volunteer. Her sister is expected to become a Hospice client soon.

“Today, when we were planning our sister’s journey over here, I was asked, ‘are you going to give her her medication? Can you?’ I said no. Because I’m a volunteer, for one thing. The volunteers can’t give medication. And I just want to hang on to my sister’s hand. I don’t want to care for her any other way,” Whitney said. “And that’s what our volunteers want to do. Good, loving care.”

Early in 2015, then-executive director Nancy Parks decided she would alleviate concerns by hiring a personal support worker (PSW), according to Bev Campbell, a Hospice volunteer, former councillor and moderator of the evening’s meeting. The PSW would cover the four-hour gap, and the money would come from the foundation, not the province. But the Community Care Access Centre, already on tender footing with the nurses’ union, nixed the move.

To volunteers, it seemed bureaucracy was winning over compassion. Shortly afterward, Parks resigned from the position she’d held for six years.

Though respectful and at times emotional, the meeting ended with a jovial note, as the full room passed a unanimous (if unofficial) resolution to call upon the board to change those by-laws that have caused so much trouble—to bring back to the original 2010 wording, and to become more transparent to members and donors.