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HaPardes is the first community home - hospice in Israel.
A home for those in their last stage of life who are seeking to spend that period in community with others, requesting dignity and the right to choose how to live their lives, until the end.
There are currently only two hospices, with a total of only a few dozen dedicated palliative beds, which serve the Israeli population. Both facilities are located in central hubs, the first being the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, and the second being the Jerusalem metropolitan area.
Palliative care in Israel faces a number of challenges : these include poor quality of death; high costs; unnecessary hospitalization; lack of accessible and sufficient options; and inequality in access.
As of today, there is no alternative in Israel for people who want to die at home, but can not. These people are often forced to end their life in a hospital for no medical reason.
HaPardes is innovating hospice care in Israel, offering all the services that are absent today from conventional home-hospice and palliative services. HaPardes is a home for 10 residents, who will come to live there at the last part of their life, seeking quality of life and a peaceful death.
There will be private rooms and common areas in a serene environment, with support for residents and their families from the staff and the community. Medical care would be provided by an outsourced professional team.
Building a “home-like” hospice within a local community offers many opportunities.
The model is a variation of the home hospice model from The Netherland, based on shared funding from residents, health system and donations.
-Spacious rooms that include an adjustable bed with accessible private bath
-A range of complementary activities to allow attentive and responsive health support that minimizes suffering day-to-day with a clear-eyed perspective on illness, in recognition that the residents’ request no medical intervention apart from pain reduction and other supportive medications and treatments.
The home will be a welcoming meeting place, warm and peaceful, for visits by loved ones.
It is a place for connecting, and it is also a place for separating.
Our vision is to transform end-of-life care in Israel and improve the quality of life, and quality of death, for those in their final days.
We have secures the first significant donation, and are now seeking for more funds
About Shoham Adi, Founder
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Graduate of Haifa University’s Holistic Spiritual Care Program
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Senior Chaplain, certified by Sha’arei Tzedek Hospital’s Advanced Chaplaincy Program
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Medical work experience in wide range of facilities, as well as one-on-one care with individuals across Israel
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Currently serves as the Director of Spiritual Care at the Binyamina Huntington’s Disease nursing home, as well as nursing homes for Holocaust survivors at Sha’ar Menashe psychiatric hospital
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Created the community involvement network of Kibbutzim all around Israel aiming to educate, collaborate and empower connections between kibbutz members and social organization regionally and nationwide
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Bachelor of Arts in Film & Television from Tel Aviv University, with several years of work in research and as an executive producer in fiction and documentary films and TV shows in Israel
Describe your image
Visualization of the building
A personal note
Ever since I began envisioning this project, and especially over these challenging months, I have drawn great inspiration from Dame Cicely Saunders, “the mother of the modern hospice movement,” who in 1967 established St. Christopher’s Hospice in London. She launched a movement whose importance still reverberates around the world; moved by her powerful path, I hope to begin something similarly beneficial and beautiful here in Israel.
The COVID19 pandemic has demonstrated once again the stark insufficiency of end-of-life care in Israel, and the severe need for greater attention and resources in the field, in so many aspects. The recurring scene is heartbreaking - people, most of them already ill and old, dying alone in
a hospital bed, without their family and friends able to hold their hand and say goodbye.
HaPardes, our innovative hospice project, is an opportunity to move forward from this low point and build a movement that demands, and delivers on, the needs of dying people and their families.
HaPardes will save the health system vital resources while it simultaneously provides higher-quality care.
We are not reinventing any wheels. Rather, we plan to simply adjust pre-existing services and combine resources much more efficiently, thereby benefiting everyone: the patients themselves, their loved ones, and the healthcare system as a whole.
An investment in HaPardes is much more than enabling a building to go up, or a service to be given. Supporting this work means situating oneself on the front lines of creating critical changes in end-of-life care itself; it means higher public awareness of, and involvement in, illness and end of life, and transformative cultural work around death and dying; it means empowering and expanding the palliative training processes and professional support infrastructure for healthcare teams in all types of facilities.
Supporting this work is directly supporting the capacity of communities to care for their own. And it is a statement, simple and sincere, that people should be escorted from this life in dignity.
I hope you will find HaPardes important and interesting and want to get involved, I invite you to contact me for more information.
In gratitude,
Shoham Adi
(+972)52-854-5094