Managing a loved one’s care and dealing with their illness can be a consuming, isolating process. It is impossible for anyone to be a caregiver 24-hours a day without outside support. Rochester Regional Health Hospice Care understands that caregivers need to continue to care for their loved one as well as themselves.
When you’re dealing with a major loss or transition, it can affect your physical, emotional, and spiritual health. At the Center for Compassion and Healing, our services will help you cope with the death of a loved one, or deal with the stresses of everyday life.
Support Services
Dealing effectively with major loss or transition affects more than just your physical well-being. Emotional and spiritual health is vital, too. At the Center, you can benefit from a wide-range of services to help you heal, regardless of why you need our help. Wellness activities, education, support, and healing therapies focus on easing suffering, providing comfort, and improving your quality of life.
Our Philosophy
We strive to embrace the total person by acknowledging the significance of every aspect of healing. Through one-on-one counseling or group interaction, you can receive care that helps to make sorrow less painful, repair and restore yourself, achieve personal harmony, and foster physical and emotional wellness.
The Center offers a welcoming environment with comforting services provided by highly-skilled professionals licensed in a variety of healing disciplines, including:
- Acupuncture
- Chiropractic services
- Grief counseling
- Massage therapy
- Music and art therapy
- Yoga and Thai Chi instruction
- Other health and wellness programs
We are proud to offer support groups for adults, children, and caregivers. When you are dealing with a loss or a painful transition, it helps to be around people who are enduring similar challenges. Support Groups boost your spirit and provide comfort through compassion and empathy. In addition, other participants are often valuable sources of information or assistance.
Children and teenagers face complex fears and feelings when coping with the illness or loss of a loved one. Rochester Regional Health Hospice Care offers groups especially for children and teens, guided by trained, experienced, and compassionate facilitators. For young people, being part of a group of like-minded peers is especially important and helpful throughout the grieving process.
We offer support groups for anyone who is dealing with grief, whether or not they’ve had prior contact with our hospice and palliative care services. All groups sponsored by our team are facilitated by people with special training and preparation for this role.
Grieving the death of a loved one can be keenly felt at any point in time. Hence, we are here to provide support from trained professionals to help you find your way through grief.
Wellness classes and workshops are tools that can reduce everyday stress and help you cope with an illness by supporting your body’s natural healing abilities. By improving your fitness and flexibility, we’re hoping to leave you feeling more relaxed, energetic, and alive.
Our wide range of educational events and activities will help you find reassurance, understanding, and encouragement. Our professionals and volunteers know how to promote healing and restore wholeness.
Our family caregiver support and education programs are open to hospice families and the general community. We strive, with every interaction, to embrace the total person by acknowledging the significance of every aspect of healing.
Wellness Education and Events
We sponsor events and activities to help educate professionals and general audiences. Events include:
- Guest Speakers - Once or twice a year, we schedule presentations by guest speakers who offer expert insights and suggestions about dealing with loss and grief.
- Janus Group and “Among Friends” - For surviving spouses who have completed the 8-week serious, Janus and “Among Friends’ offer a continuation of grief work.
- Griefscape - This seminar is for people who work in the healing professions, and is presented annually in the fall as a continuing education program for nurses, social workers, clergy, and those who interact with families who have lost a loved one.
- Living with Grief - Each spring, we sponsor the local presentation of this national video conference, featuring experts on various aspects of end-of-life care and grief counseling. Although these programs are intended primarily for care professionals, caregivers and bereaved people may also find them valuable.
Publications produced by Rochester Regional Health are available for purchase by individuals and other healthcare providers. Hundreds of hospices and other organizations now use these in their family and community education programs.
Journeys End, by hospice nurse Deborah Sigrist.
Widely praised by members of our hospice families, this powerful booklet helps ease the fears of families about the dying process.
- Offer advice on things they can do to make their loved ones more comfortable
- Provides guidance that is gentle but direct
32 pages. $4 per copy (plus shipping).
Finding Your Way Through Grief, by bereavement counselor Theo Munson.
This popular booklet is given to every family served by our hospice and is available to anyone in any of our support groups.
- Focuses on coping techniques and support systems
- Draws on the author’s 14 years in oncology and bereavement counseling
- Reassures and offes valuable suggestions
24 pages. $3 per copy (plus shipping).
The Patient Visitor: A Guide to Comforting A Dying Friend, also by Theo Munson
The advice in this new booklet comes from the best possible sources, terminally ill patients served by Lifetime Care Hospice and members of their families.
- Offers sounds guidance through eloquent testimony
- Aids anyone in overcoming personal feelings of inadequacy, hesitancy and worry that fuel putting off a visit to someone we care about
44 pages. $5 per copy (plus shipping).
Discounts are offered on bulk orders of these publications:
- 25-99 copies: 10% discount
- 100-199 copies: 15% discount
- 200+ copies: 20% discount
To order any of the above, please call (585) 214-1000 ext. 3.
Helpful Links and Other Resources
- Compassion and Support at the End of Life
- Caring Connections
- Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York State
- National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
- New York State Department of Health
- Caregiver Action Network
- National Alliance for Caregiving
- Caregiving
- Family Caregiver Alliance
- Today's Care Giver