As a former MFT Intern and now a Bereavement Counselor with Hospice By The Bay, my work focuses primarily on grief counseling – supporting clients through loss, grief and bereavement processes both in one-to-one sessions and group facilitation.
In the early 1970s, dedicated volunteers in Marin County, California, recognized the need to start an agency that would provide hospice care — a new kind of holistic, compassionate care for patients coping with terminal illness that also offered support for their families. Families wanted support so they could care for their loved ones at home or at a long-term care facility. Physicians wanted an alternative to hospitalizing patients at the end of their lives.
In 1975,Hospice of Marin (now Hospice By The Bay) is founded as a community, non-profit hospice, the second hospice in the U.S. and the first in California. Led by volunteers, Medical Director Dr. William Lamers, Jr., the Rev. John Thorton and community advocate Barbara Hill, HOM provides terminally ill patients with compassionate hospice care at home, care that minimizes pain and suffering to improve quality of life. The agency’s pioneering work in hospice becomes the model for other start-up hospice programs around the country, as grant funds allow staff and volunteers to train other healthcare professionals about end‐of‐life care.
In 2006, Hospice of Marin was renamed Hospice By The Bay to reflect the geographic area that it now serves — the counties of Marin, San Francisco, Northern San Mateo and Sonoma.Throughout its growth, Hospice By The Bay has continued to offer the highest‐quality hospice and palliative care and grief counseling. It continues to add other innovative and compassionate programs to support its patients, their families and the community.This is an excerpt from Hospice By The Bay website: www.hospicebythebay.org