Quest for County’s First AIDS Hospice Gets $25,000 Boost

A committee of medical and lay people seeking to establish Orange County’s first AIDS hospice got a boost this week from a Los Angeles-based foundation, which donated $25,000 toward the goal.

The grant from the California Community Foundation will be added to $37,000 in contributions and be used to hire a manager for the project, said Ross Conner, a UCI social ecology professor and co-chair of the 18-member steering committee formed a year ago to establish the hospice.

Conner said he hopes that a single 15-bed facility or several smaller ones spread throughout the county can be opened next year to provide physical comfort and psychological support to people who have the acquired immune deficiency syndrome and who are not expected to live more than 6 months. The hospice would also serve a small number of dying cancer patients, Conner said. No site has been selected yet, he said.

Took Four Years

“It took the (AIDS) hospice in San Francisco 4 years to become a reality. We hope to do better than that,” Conner said.

Operating a 15-bed hospice would cost about $1 million a year, Conner said. The money would come from private donations, government grants and foundation awards. Part of the project manager’s job would be to coordinate funding, Conner said.

Jack Shakely, president of the 73-year-old California Community Foundation, said the foundation has distributed money to many kinds of organizations, including community redevelopment and cultural groups.

The $25,000 grant to the newly incorporated Hospice of Orange County was part of $350,000 in grants the foundation awarded this week to 20 organizations, Shakely said. The Hospice of Orange County was the only Orange County organization to receive a share of the money; the other 19 organizations were all in Los Angeles County.

“We felt it is extremely important that there be a hospice in Orange County,” Shakely said. “We were very interested in getting the first one off the ground in hopes that maybe others will follow.”

Encourages Others

Conner said the foundation’s award will make it easier to get money from other sources. “It means,” he said, “that our effort has been looked over by an independent source and they have decided that what we’re doing is good.”

A few organizations in Orange County provide hospice-like services in people’s homes, but none operate a 24-hour residence where comprehensive services are available, Conner said.

According to statistics from the County Health Care Agency, 861 cases of AIDS have been diagnosed in the county since 1980. Of those, 505 have resulted in death. Another 441 people have been diagnosed with AIDS-related conditions, and of those, 23 have died.

Conner said there are 13 AIDS hospices operating in the United States.