Thanks to Your Support

Winter/Hotoke 2019 Sister Margaret Lancaster outside Mary Potter Hospice, Calvary Hospital, 1986. Margaret sees her role on the board is to keep the legacy and spirit of Mary Potter alive. “I am a link to the Mary Potter values, and I am a link to the Little Company of Mary Sisters who are still alive. I am a link to how it started.” Forty years and still going strong – thanks to your support Providing free-of-charge, high quality Running the Mary Potter Ward was expensive for the hospice care has been the vision of Mary Little Company of Mary, and Sister Margaret and her Potter Hospice for four decades. team spent many long hours gathering support and fundraising. In 1978 they gave Mary Potter Hospice This year we celebrate 40 years of incredible support to the people of Wellington. In 1979, George Gair, from the Wellington, Porirua and Kāpiti communities, the Minister of Health, formally opened Mary Potter who have made that care possible. But our history Hospice as New Zealand’s first hospice. goes back further than that. After a huge fundraising effort, the Newtown Inpatient The Little Company of Mary set up the Mary Potter Unit was built in 1990. Since then the Hospice has set Ward for the aged, sick and dying at Calvary Hospital. up community bases in Warrimoo Street in Kāpiti in In 1974 the Mary Potter Ward at Calvary started to 1996 and in Porirua, first with a community base at operate as a hospice. Over the next three years the Kenepuru Hospital in 2002. Just this year we have whole ground floor was converted to the care of cemented our presence in Porirua with the purchase terminally ill people. of a community base – Te Whare Rānui. Sister Margaret Lancaster is the last nun in Wellington Mary Potter Hospice is now a secular organisation with the Little Company of Mary. Margaret planned that runs for the people of Wellington, Porirua and and then ran the hospice for its first 12 years, and has Kāpiti, and exists because of your support – now served on the board for the past six years. thank you. Kia ora tātou, In this, our 40th anniversary year, along the way, we have been able I am pleased to write and thank to continue. you for everything you have done We are bigger and provide a to help us to meet the needs of broader range of services now than our patients and their whānau. ever before. Social work, cultural It is inspiring to see how people support, Enhanced Hospice @ have stepped up time and time Home and much more have been again to help the Hospice to added to the mix. This year we will flourish. support about 900 patients – 40 We rely heavily on the support of years ago it was about 200. the people of Wellington, Porirua This special issue of our and Kāpiti for our survival. There newsletter includes some of the Everything we’ve achieved has have been many times when the fascinating stories from our early been with your support – thank financial situation appeared dire, days. As you read this I hope you you. but a combination of amazing feel pride and satisfaction that this generosity, good governance and Brent Alderton Hospice is truly your hospice. what appear to be little miracles Chief Executive Nurse Di sees improved quality of life for dying patients In 38 years of nursing at Mary Potter Hospice, Di Florence has seen many people die. “It’s part of life; we’ve all got to do it,” she says. But some cases make her feel particularly sad. “I guess the younger people, which doesn’t seem fair – like parents losing their children.” Di, 71, is the longest serving member of staff at Mary Potter Hospice. She trained in Wellington Public Hospital and worked in theatre, orthopaedics and district nursing. She was employed by the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary in March 1981. Her children were young, and she was looking for evening shifts. Di has seen many changes over the years at Mary Potter “The hours suited both them and me because I Hospice. But one constant has been the Hospice values: would come on and relieve the nuns because they Respect, Compassion, Dignity, Hospitality, Stewardship. would go to mass at 6 o’clock,” she says. She says the huge difference in hospice care is the medication that is now available, along with Our thanks to Bee Dawson, palliative chemotherapy and radiotherapy to control author of ‘With You: The Mary the symptoms and the cancers themselves. “We Potter Hospice Story’. She has have come a long way with pain relief and how we given permission to use excerpts can control symptoms.” from the book, which was written In 1984, her father was admitted to Mary Potter in 2014 to commemorate the Hospice and she then learned what it was like to be Hospice’s 35th birthday and 100 the family of a patient. She continued working while years since the first Sisters of the her colleagues cared for him. “I knew he was being Little Company of Mary arrived in Christchurch. We well looked after. He was 67, younger than I am now.” have 10 copies of the book to give away, so if you’d like a copy please email [email protected] Wellington: 48–52 Mein St, Newtown Find us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter facebook.com/ @MaryPotterNZ Nth Wellington: 10 Awatea Street, Porirua MaryPotterHospice [email protected] Kāpiti: 36 Warrimoo St, Paraparaumu Four decades of support from the community In 1979 it cost around $600,000 to run Mary Other regular fundraisers are the Annual Street Potter Hospice. This year it will cost about Appeal, the Hospice Strawberry Festivals in Kāpiti, $14 million to provide services to patients Wellington and Porirua and come Christmas there with terminal illnesses. That’s around will again be volunteers wrapping gifts for a gold- coin donation and selling raffle tickets. $38,000 every day. Government funding pays just under half of this cost. The Hospice is currently fundraising for the renovation of its newest community hospice, in The story of the Hospice’s strong connection to the Porirua, called Te Whare Rānui, a name gifted by community goes back to the early days of the Ngāti Toa. Hospice. Service organisations, businesses and individuals have always kept a warm place in their hearts as well as their wallets, for the hospice and provided the support for the hospice. Over the years this has included an ambitious When Sister Elizabeth campaign in 1989 to raise $6.3 million to build the was collecting for Mary new Mein Street Hospice. It was a huge undertaking Potter Hospice in 1984 – a small army of volunteers rang their way through an assistant Railways guard, Mr Evan Lawrence, the Wellington phonebook to raise $800,000. The was one of the many success of the appeal was regarded as a national who gave a donation on record for a local community. his way to work. Fashions may have changed, but In 1996 the Kapiti Community Hospice was opened the Hospice still relies on with a $364,000 contribution from the community. the generosity of the In 2009 in a ‘Double the Appeal’ campaign raised community to survive. $650,000 to repair a leaking roof at the Newtown complex. As the Majestic Centre on the corner of Willis Street and Boulcott Street was being constructed, the Hospice was fundraising for a new Inpatient Unit in Mein Street, Newtown. Nowadays this building is a restaurant, but In 1986 the Evening Post ran this photo showing a group of had had something of a chequered past including when Wellington Rotary members and their bed in a fundraising it was called The House of Ladies. project for the Hospice. © 2019 Mary Potter Hospice, Wellington, New Zealand. No reproduction without permission. No reproduction New Zealand. © 2019 Mary Potter Hospice, Wellington, Volunteer army started by taking out the tea trolley Edna Cooke was the first person to volunteer at Mary Potter Hospice. She was at the head of what is now a volunteer army of more than 600 people. In addition are over 1000 volunteers who help collect for the annual street appeal. This photo taken at Wakefield Hospital shows Betty Fowler in the foreground the Hospice’s first volunteer Edna arrived at the Mary Potter Ward at Calvary coordinator. From left in background: Edna Cooke, Hospital in 1976 and asked what she could do to Vernon Hall and Josie Usmar. help. Charge Nurse Sister Margaret suggested she take around the morning tea trolley. Volunteers still take charge of the tea trolley – and the drinks trolley – and offer a huge range of other skills. The first Hospice car Volunteers now contribute more than 60,000 hours a year to Mary Potter Hospice and this is Sister Margaret critical in keeping the service free for everybody. In Lancaster shares the the Inpatient Unit in Newtown volunteers serve story of the Hospice’s meals and drinks, work on reception and first car. administration, and do the flowers. In the early days Sister Margaret nursed one of In the Hospice Day Units in Newtown, Porirua and the directors of the Shell Oil Company. Highly Kāpiti they provide transport to patients, art therapy impressed by the care he received, he made and cook meals. A free biography service is offered provision for Shell to give the Hospice petrol with trained volunteer biographers. for a car. As demand grows for more volunteers in the “When we explained that we didn’t have a community Companion Volunteers provide Hospice car he said that the contract would companionship to patients at home while carers remain until we needed it,” says Sister Margaret.

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