Hetherington House

HETHER INGTON HOUSE times to add on the hospital wing, and the secure Dementia unit in 2011. Today, the facility has 32 rest home beds, 12 hospital beds and 6 dementia beds and offers both long term and short term/ respite care and a day care service. According to Facility Manager, Olwyn Kunz, “Over the last two years, extensive renovating and upgrading has been carried out. The dining room and lounge were painted, this was done through a grant donated by OceanaGold, and new dining room and lounge chairs and curtains in lovely shades of teal and blue were added. The furniture and fittings for these rooms were generously sponsored by private persons, businesses, and clubs. We also put in new carpet, La-Z-Boy chairs in the hospital area were purchased and the inside of the hospital area has been painted. We are also going through the purchase of 41 new electric beds from USL and they are negotiating donating the old beds to the islands. We are assured these beds will be used in hospitals and not thrown on the scrap heap.” Back in the 1970s, a prominent local woman named Francis Bicknell wrote an encouraging letter of support to the opening of the home and was instrumental in helping to raise funds. She later became a much-loved resident of Hetherington House. For some time, the home has been working on a new garden area based on a Chelsea Award winning garden; Francis donated the first plant and the space has now been dedicated as the Frances Bicknell Memorial Garden. Kunz notes, “When I started two years ago the gardens were in complete disarray. I have a horticultural degree and I’m a keen gardener, so I managed to hire a local lady who comes in every week and does the gardens and they are gorgeous. We’re in the process of creating a raised round garden bed and I noticed a picture in a magazine of an award-winning garden at the Chelsea Garden Show. So I sent the owner an email and she kindly sent me a list of the plants. We’re using as many as we can and it’s starting to look very pretty.” Hetherington House is owned by the community and blessed with incredible community involvement. People pop in with home-grown produce and flowers; the church donates all the fruit and vegetables after their Thanksgiving festival. Residents of Waihi bring in TVs, radios… people volunteer to read to the residents, assist them with eating, accompany them to hospital appointments. “We could not survive without them,” says Kunz, “because we are a charity organisation and whatever money we make goes back into Hetherington House. We don’t have shareholders, and it is used for the people of Waihi and the surrounding area.” As part of Hetherington House’s certification with the DHB, persons are assessed by the government to come in either for rest home, or hospital, or dementia level care. Once they are in the facility, if their condition changes from a rest home to a hospital, the nurses can do a reassessment. The DHB contract also mandates subjects for staff training. Kunz explains, “We do extra training, as well. We bring in external people for that or we send our staff on training courses in the area, especially in palliative care because all our residents will be end of life at some stage. I have