Auxiliary to the Abbotsford Regional Hospital
President/ Janet Hutchinson
We are celebrating our 100th Anniversary this year.
Our goal is to provide comfort and support through personal contact between Auxiliary volunteers and patients, either one-to-one or as a group, in order to maintain and staff a gift shop. We reach our goals with the help of our 88 members. The main source of income is our gift shop.
We are lucky that it is in a very high-profile area of the Atrium in our hospital. The last year and a half was a challenge to raise funds but we were able to open the shop on Aug. 18, 2020 with full safety precautions. We started with limited hours and slowly increased to what we have now (Mon – Fri 10-4).
In the past we have held bake and vendor sales, raffles and garage sales. We have a very active knitting group that supplies our shop with newborn sweater sets, hats, booties, blankets and quilts. We also supply the NICU and Maternity with little hats and also purple hats for the shaking baby syndrome program.
Our Auxiliary is very fortunate to have a shopper to purchase needed sweat suits, socks, underwear and footwear for our Resource Depot in the Emergency Department and also we supply personal care items for Forensic Nursing. We have members who participate in various programs throughout the hospital. (Surgical Daycare, Emergency, cuddle babies, information desk, Kidney Dialysis and Piano playing to name a few). We also provide funding for programs and supplies to Cottage/Worthington Pavilion and have a few members who volunteer there to help with the programs. One program we fund is ballet with the elementary school children participating with the residents. Currently, only the information desk and gift shop are active.