Our Story
Most Canadians want to die at home.
But where do you go to live your last days if you don’t have a home?
That’s the challenge that Journey Home Hospice addresses. Launched in 2018, Journey Home Hospice is a program of the Saint Elizabeth Foundation, hosted by Homes First Society. It is our passion to improve equitable access to hospice palliative care for patients experiencing homelessness and vulnerable housing in a socially innovative way.
Journey Home Hospice provides our patients and families with 24/7 high quality health care services and a safe, welcoming, and caring environment for their end-of-life journey. Our interdisciplinary clinical team includes physicians, nurses, personal support workers, social workers, spiritual care providers, complementary therapists, and a wonderful group of caring volunteers. All care providers received enhanced training in trauma-informed, culturally safe, and harm-reducing approaches to care, ensuring that each patient receives individualized care plans that honour their life’s journey. We believe in a holistic model of care that addresses pain and symptom management, psychosocial needs, and spiritual care, offered in a flexible, responsive, and respectful setting. Journey Home Hospice is truly a place based in the community, for the community.
We currently have 10 hospice beds and three chronic hospice beds in downtown Toronto and opened three satellite hospice beds in Windsor, Ontario in 2022, hosted by Assisted Living Southwestern Ontario (ALSO). We continually measure key indicators in areas such as quality, safety, patient satisfaction and system impact to ensure we are achieving our goal of excellence in homeless end-of-life care. Journey Home Hospice is also a teaching and learning facility for national and international health care providers to study the specialized delivery of hospice palliative care for patients experiencing homelessness and structural vulnerability.
Journey Home Hospice Toronto site receives partial operating funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care through the Toronto Central Home and Community Care Support Services.