The precious items of loved ones who have passed need to be treated with care. 

The Ku-ring-gai Rotary Club have taken on a community project for the Neringah Palliative Care Hospital in Wahroonga, making cotton bags for patient’s items when they are returned to the families.

Before the pandemic, volunteers would create and supply Neringah Hospital with sturdy bags for the late patient’s affects. With volunteers having dwindled significantly, Neringah have resorted to putting the items in plastic bags, a solution the hospice team were unsatisfied with.

‘They are embarrassed,’ explains Ku-ring-gai Rotary member Warwick Cumming. ‘They feel it is a quite demeaning way to treat the goods of the deceased.’

Along with the cotton bags, Rotary are donating fiddle blankets – tactile activity quilts with zippers and buttons for dementia patient stimulation – and syringe bags for patients to carry medication on their person throughout the hospital. Rotary have put $5,000 towards the project, creating 10 fiddle blankets, 10 syringe bags, and 700 cotton bags for the hospital.

Neringah Hospital hopes community members will return to volunteer their time creating these totes for local patient’s and their families, though in the meantime, Rotary have been of great assistance, donating a two year supply.

‘If we could find a few more volunteers who enjoy doing these things, that would be terrific,’ says Rotary member Warwick.

Ku-ring-gai Rotary Club handed over their gift of fiddle blankets, syringe and cotton bags to Neringah Palliative Care Hospital in late November.