Locally Owned by Clinicians Who Care
Locally Owned by Clinicians Who Care
As a hospice volunteer, you will work with a clinical team of a doctor, nurse, aide, chaplain, and social worker. Every Haven volunteer receives free and comprehensive training before working with a patient. You’ll learn about hospice philosophy, grief and loss, health and safety precautions, and how to care for the terminally ill.
Hospice volunteers need to know that hospice work takes its toll. You become friends with people who are going to die, and with the people who love them. You must be able to sit quietly, take a back seat to the events taking place around you, and be a calming presence when that is called for.
As an 11th Hour volunteer, you will ensure no one completes their life’s journey alone
Provide support in the office: filing, preparing mailings, computer input, answering the phones, special projects, etc.
Help patients and families explore their creative side and express their feelings. Guide them in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, or other visual arts you have experience in.
Assist with visits, phone calls, support groups, memorial services and send bereavement mailings. Provide help with bereavement tasks to allow the family to focus on remembrance of their loved one.
Visit patients and families at home, nursing homes, and inpatient hospice units. Pay a friendly visit; relieve a family caregiver for an afternoon; accompany a patient on an outing; read aloud; listen to memories; walk the dog; be the high point of someone’s day.
Provide haircuts, shampoos, and styling to patients. Volunteers must have a current cosmetology license.
Help the family reminisce and/or record a patient’s life stories.
Provide friendly touch and massage to patients. Volunteers must have a current massage therapy license.
Help the family and their loved ones reminisce and cope through music. Sing, play music, or gather the patient’s favorite music to provide comfort and care.
Screened and trained pets and their volunteer owners visit patients and provide socialization, comfort, and calming companionship.
Take pictures of the patient and family so they can focus on making memories. Volunteers generally provide a digital copy of photos to the family.
Address spiritual issues at the end of life: meaning, faith, life review, issues related to loss, loneliness, etc.
Meet educational requirements for on-the-job experience while providing care to patients and families. Examples include: social work, counseling, chaplaincy, nursing, physician assistants, business schools, massage therapy, community job programs.
Make supportive phone calls to patients and their families.
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At Haven Home Health and Hospice, we are proud to be the last locally-owned, independent, and clinician-led provider of home-based care in our region. While that may sound like a simple fact, it’s actually a defining difference—one that matters deeply to the quality of care our patients receive every day. In recent years, private equity firms and large corporate healthcare chains have rapidly bought out home health and hospice providers across the country, including right here in our community. What we’ve seen in the aftermath is troubling: rapid turnover of staff, shrinking time spent with patients, and decisions driven more by profit margins than by compassion, dignity, and clinical excellence.
We believe healthcare should never be treated like a commodity. That’s why we’ve remained committed to local, clinician-led ownership—because we answer to patients, not shareholders. Our leadership is hands-on, involved, and invested in every life we touch. We believe that meaningful care takes time, intention, and heart—and it starts with the people who make the decisions. As owners who are also licensed clinicians, we understand the weight of the responsibility we carry. Our patients are not numbers in a spreadsheet. They are parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends. And we believe they deserve the kind of care we’d want for our own families. We will continue to stand against the corporatization of healthcare, and we invite you to stand with us. Whether you’re a patient, a referral partner, or a member of the community, your trust makes it possible for us to preserve something rare and essential in today’s healthcare system: personalized, human-centered care. Because in the end, ownership isn’t just about who signs the papers—it’s about who shows up when it matters most.
– John Ray, Founder
