About Us
The OutCare Foundation is an independent registered charity dedicated to raising funds for community-based palliative care in Eastern Ontario. Our goal is for individuals and their families to have access to the care and support they need for their end-of-life journey.
Our mandate doesn’t tie us to any agency, government, or provider, allowing us to fund priorities in our community, and to assess and provide support where it is needed most.
As we move towards our third decade in the community and our 20th anniversary as the OutCare Foundation, we continue to respond to the changing needs of our community. OutCare is launching a new fundraising campaign to focus primarily on the support of in-home palliative care programs provided by the hospices in the Champlain Health Region.
Over the past decade our community has changed, and a series of strategic planning sessions supported by these demographic facts from a Health Canada study have helped OutCare revise our focus:
• The majority (75%) of the population prefer to spend their final days in the comfort of their homes;
• Only 15% of people receive palliative specific home care in their final month of life.
• The number of people over the age of 80 will double by 2036.
Our region has only 62 residential hospice beds (in 8 locations) and one dedicated 31-bed sub-acute palliative care unit (Bruyère) for a total of 93 palliative care beds to serve a region of over 1.3 million. The current residential hospice model for palliative care does not have the capacity to handle the demand within our community.
The OutCare Foundation will support this need to deliver palliative services into homes to ease the burden on the families and on the healthcare system. Please join us on this new direction and help to make it possible for more people in our community to live out their final days with love, hope and dignity.
History
The OutCare Foundation has been providing funding for health care and related community programs since 2001, but our history of health care support goes further back. We were originally created as the Riverside Hospital Foundation in 1984. After several Ottawa hospitals integrated in 1997, the Foundation continued as a distinct entity and was rebranded as the OutCare Foundation in 2001 to reflect a focus on “out (of hospital) care” programs.
For the next few years, OutCare provided financial support to a wide range of community programs in Ottawa and throughout our community. Over time, we recognized an unmet need for “end of life” palliative care. As a result, OutCare refocused in 2005 to increase community awareness about this need and to provide financial support for the community palliative care programs (delivered primarily by the Hospice at May Court). OutCare advocated for more dedicated palliative care beds in the Champlain Health Region. OutCare also raised public awareness of the need for these out of hospital hospice services.
Thanks to the support of our community, for the past 15 years, OutCare has funded a broad range of initiatives for palliative care providers throughout the Ottawa and Eastern Ontario region; including:
• a successful telemedicine project;
• promotion and facilitation of Advanced Care Planning;
• bursaries for both palliative care volunteers and students; and,
• equipment that improves the comfort, care and quality of life for those facing end-of-life."
OutCare Foundation
214-720 Belfast Road
Ottawa, ON K1G 0Z5
[email protected]
Jennifer Cass
Program Coordinator
(613) 232-2273
[email protected]