The daily demands of caring for fragile, severely ill children can take a tremendous toll on the care giving parents and family members.

Hope House is a home-based care program that provides time out for the families of these special children.

By next year, the dream of building a respite care center for dozens of children afflicted with life threatening conditions who live in Fayette and 11 neighboring counties will become a reality.

Mary Lou Marshall, operations manager for Hope House, estimated the cost of building the center, which will be next to Southwest Christian Hospice in Union City, to be about $1.2 million. “Presently, there is no respite care here for children,” Marshall said. There is one room allocated for this purpose at the hospice, but the current method of service is for staff members and volunteers to stay with the child in his home.

Plans call for an eight-bedroom wing complete with a family lounge, two parent's efficiency rooms, game room, computer and music room, library, multisensory room, hydrotherapy pool, spa bath and showers, gardens, outdoor play area and chapel. Staffing will include a care manager and nursing staff, pediatric nurses, nursing assistants, a social worker, physiotherapist, a chaplain and support staff.

Five years ago, Myrna Bond, director of nursing at Southwest Christian Hospice, attended an international conference on children's hospice care in Washington, D.C. She returned home with a new sense of joy and dedication to the goal of caring for children with life threatening conditions.

“As I listened to parents report disturbed sleep, fatigue and burnout, I realized how much they needed our supportive care,” she said. “Jesus let us know how important children are to Him when He said, `Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven' (Mark 10:14).

“Many of these children have 24-hour care demands and can never be left alone,” Bond added. “I started thinking how wonderful it would be if we would begin providing inpatient respite care for these children and these parents.

“The parents could stay and assist with care until they felt comfortable leaving them with us,” she said. “The children and the parents could benefit from assistance with physical care, as well as the spiritual encouragement we provide,” she added.

Respite care could be a few days, or as long as two weeks on any one visit, she said.

This is the goal of Hope House, and it will be met through donations from churches, corporate sponsors and individuals.

Volunteers provide an enormous amount of support for Hope House, from caring for the children to offering little extras, such as Easter baskets.

When Jennifer Cole of Tyrone signed on and trained as a volunteer, she was asked by Marshall to coordinate the holiday basket project. She was linked up with Buddy and Janice Duncan of Wildwood flowers and gifts in Fayetteville and the result was 17 pastel-ribboned baskets customized for each child.

The process of shopping for the toys and books for the baskets and the assembly took some interesting twists and turns. “The week I met with Janice, I received a check for $300 from a friend named Renee Namaste of Costa Mesa, Calif.,” Cole said. “She said she was leaving her legacy now before she dies.” Although Cole discovered her old friend was not ill, she wanted to do something special. She decided to use the found cash for unique and personal gifts to fill the baskets.

In the meantime, Duncan was hit with the news that she must undergo surgery for breast cancer. She and her husband assembled all the baskets prior to her hospital stay. “It was very important to me to get it done,” Duncan said, “and we really enjoyed doing it.”

Duncan said Thursday that she's “doing great” and is back at work. The baskets will be delivered to the Hope House children before Easter weekend.

For information about Hope House and its volunteer program, phone 770-969-8354.

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