Starlight Palliative & Hospice Care Unique Patient Care Programs
We provide regular care visits to our patients and promise to be by your side when you need us most. We always seek to optimise the time we spend with our patients and their loved ones by reinventing our hospice services.
We embrace the modern technology and ways of communication to ensure we are easily accessible to patients and their families and carers; these communications lines are always open via telephone, email and WhatsApp and many more.
We are fully committed to giving you and your family the care you deserve by offering you the quality hospice care whether at your home via our Hospice @Home program or at our in-patients’ unit. Starlight Palliative & Hospice Care offers unique programs such as
- Culturally Sensitive Care
- Bereavement Care
- Forget-me-not Memorials
- Life Journals
Culturally Sensitive Care
At Starlight we understand human dynamics that occur throughout life. We acknowledge that the world being a global village we have people from different walks of life, different religions, beliefs, race, age and we therefore anticipate to care for culturally diverse community. We are constantly adapting our care plans to incorporating cultural and other needs of the patients and family. Good communication is an important aspect of hospice care, so we endeavour to communicate in a manner that is most comfortable for everyone.
We are committed to address cultural diversities and we are prepared to reinvent and adjust the way we deliver care in order to ensure our care is appropriate and relevant to those we care for.
If you are unsure if we can take care of you or your relative who might not be a ‘Mosotho’ please do not hesitate to get in touch with our team.
Bereavement Care
While grief is normal and natural, sometimes it can be a challenge to adjust to the changes brought by loss and hence there are different ways to deal with it; either to deal with loss in a healthy way or decide to postpone grieving process. Consequently, most of the information we hear about dealing with grief is incorrect such as: time heals all wounds; don’t feel bad; grieve alone; replace the loss; or keep busy. We at Starlight, we offer families comprehensive bereavement support and grief counselling to help them with the grieving process.
We are committed to relieve the suffering and distress caused by bereavement for all adults and children in our care. We are here to support individuals and families from the point of diagnosis, through cancer journey and beyond; beyond can be survivorship or bereavement.
As part of our commitment to providing bereavement care, we assess and when the need is identified, then we intervene to walk those concerned through their grieving process. It helps people “move beyond” the pain caused by loss. It is a twelve-week program led by our capable staff at Starlight Palliative and Hospice services.
It creates a safe environment for participants to examine old beliefs about dealing with loss; what other losses have affected their lives; and explore new actions that can ease the pain of a loss.
For members of the public who wish to access our bereavement service, please seek further information by getting in touch with us.
Bereavement Care works with people who:
- have been bereaved regardless of when the loss occurred
- have experienced bereavement due to a sudden, unexpected or untimely death
- have witnessed a traumatic or violent death
- encounter death in their work
- have survived a disaster
- work with bereaved children and young people and their families
Forget-Me-Not Memorials
These memorials are held with families. Families are invited to attend the memorials and activities of the day depend on how families agree; this can be observing moments of silence, prayer, balloon releases or candle lighting.
Life Journal
Our main goal is to provide the highest quality of life for our patients while supporting their beloved families. Working closely with patients and families, experience has taught us there are only a few things most people want at the end of life such as:
- To be remembered
- To pass down their life experiences and beliefs
- To know that their life mattered.
As a way to honour and fulfil these desires, Starlight helps patients create a Life Journal to pass on their experiences and advice. The Life Journals are compiled by our volunteers from the communities. The volunteers spend time with the patient gathering stories and experiences important to them. Volunteers work hand in hand with families to compile photographs. The photos and stories are combined to create a beautiful hardback book, Life Journal, for the family to cherish for years and generations to come.
Contact us for more details