Champions Start Small: A Gift from the Sandra Schmirler Foundation Helps Our Tiniest Patients

St. Joe’s is home to the busiest maternity ward in Hamilton and every year our Special Care Nursery helps about 600 sick or premature babies to receive the care and support they need to go home safely. These bundles of joy need a lot of specialized equipment to help them learn to feed and breathe on their own.

Equipment is an essential item at our Hospital that is not funded by the operating dollars we receive from the province. But recently we received a new grant of $11,500 from the Sandra Schmirler Foundation to help purchase a new bassinet and two feeding pumps for our Special Care Nursery. Sandra, a gold medal winning Olympian, believed that Champions Start Small, and this donation will help us take care of our tiniest patients. Read more here.

A Notice to our Donors and Friends

Security Incident at Third-Party Provider

Recently, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Foundation was informed by Blackbaud, Inc. (“Blackbaud”), a third-party service provider, that they had discovered and stopped a ransomware attack on their systems. In an abundance of caution and with deep respect for the trust that our donors have placed in us, we are sharing this information with you and have posted a notice about it on our website. Please click here to learn more and contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

Access to Mental Health Care Matters

That’s why Hamilton Community Foundation has granted and facilitated $100,000 in funding to help ensure our community and our frontline workers have access to the mental health care they need

Mental health and addiction-related concerns are predicted to be the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic as our community grapples with feelings of stress, anxiety, isolation and depression from the economic, social and emotional impact of the virus. Here at St. Joe’s, we’re busily preparing for this forecasted increase in demand for mental health services and $100,000 in grant funding is helping to ensure we’ll be ready. 

A $50,000 grant from Hamilton Community Foundation’s Pandemic Response Fund is supporting six months of operations of a new mobile mental health unit. Registered nurses from the Schizophrenia & Community Integration Service team at St. Joe’s have rented an accessible bus that travels across the Hamilton region providing essential bloodwork and medical injections to hundreds of outpatients who were temporarily unable to come to the Hospital for care due to measures in place to slow the spread of COVID-19. Read more about how this grant is ensuring people living with schizophrenia have access to the care they need—now and beyond the pandemic—by clicking here.

A long-time leader in mental health care, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton was one of only five Hospitals in Ontario selected to provide virtual mental health care to the healthcare workers who have been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic since the very beginning. A second grant of $50,000 from the Government of Canada’s Emergency Community Support Fund and Hamilton Community Foundation is helping the Hospital recruit a dedicated intake worker who will work evenings and weekends to be accessible during off-peak times when doctors, nurses, long-term care staff and personal support workers are more likely to have time to seek the mental health care and support they need. Read more about this grant to support the mental wellbeing of Hamilton’s heroes of healthcare by clicking here.