STHS Home Health and Hospice thanks its volunteers – from a distance

STHS Home Health and Hospice workers greet a volunteer with an ice-cream float and other gifts as part of an improvised drive-through appreciation event held at the Home Health facility in Covington on Friday, May 1, 2020. For safety reasons, the hospital’s Home Health volunteers, like so many other people, have been in self-isolation since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in March. (Photos by Mike Scott / STHS)

By Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org

Like so many others across the country, the small army of volunteers at St. Tammany Health System’s Home Health and Hospice Department have been hunkering down in self-isolation for the past several weeks. But although they’ve been gone, they’ve by no means been forgotten.

That much was made clear Friday (May 1) as Home Health colleagues staged a sort of reverse Mardi Gras parade to let their volunteers know how much they’ve been missed.

“April was Volunteer Appreciation Month, and normally they’d be here and we’d be doing some sort of appreciation event,” said Paula Toups, the health system’s assistant vice president of Home Health and Hospice.

Given social-distancing protocols necessitated by the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, Toups’ crew realized that the sort of mass gathering traditionally held as a volunteer thank-you -- usually a luncheon -- wouldn’t be possible. That’s when Home Health Office Coordinator Charlotte Chauvin got another idea.

And so, all morning on Friday, a stream of some of Home Health’s 40-some-odd volunteers drove past the Home Health building, located on 11^th Avenue across the street from the Covington hospital, where they were greeted and celebrated – from a distance – by masked but beaming STHS colleagues.

Beneath a banner expressing thanks, a table was set up for the preparation of ice-cream floats to be handed to each passing volunteer. They each also received a “COVID survival kit” – a tote bag containing toilet paper, a face covering, lip balm and the like – as well as a potted herb reading either “Thank you for sharing your thyme” or “You were ‘mint’ to be a volunteer.”

Although Toups said many volunteers are still finding ways to contribute -- by making blankets and the like from home, or by calling those patients they might normally visit in person -- the reactions of those driving through on Friday made it clear they can’t wait to be back on-site and helping once more in person.

STHS volunteers Mike and Nancy Wyatt wave to the hospital’s Home Health and Hospice team at a drive-through volunteer appreciation event held recently at the health system’s Home Health office.

STHS colleagues present thank-you gifts to Home Health and Hospice volunteers at a volunteer appreciation drive-through held Friday.