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The Missouri Hospice & Palliative Care Association has awarded Stephanie “Stevie” Shuchart, LCMSW, with the 2018 Heart of Hospice Award for her outstanding work in caring for hospice patients, their families and the community. Stevie developed the unique Passages program to provide more intense mental health counseling than is normally available in the hospice arena.
Each year hospices from around the state nominate individuals and programs in the following categories; employee, administrative volunteer, patient care volunteer, hospice aide, program award, and life time achievement award. MHPCA nominating committee reviews all the nominations to select a winner in each category. Stevie Shuchart was chosen as the 2018 Hospice Employee Heart of Hospice Award winner.
Stevie Shuchart received her master’s degree in social work a little later in life. She served as a slightly nontraditional student intern for Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care. She was well suited to the work and was hired following the completion of her degree. She spent years helping patients and families with financial strain, emotional goodbyes, bucket lists events and funeral planning. While doing this difficult work, she continued to educate herself and work on completing the requirements for clinical licensure. After completing all the requirements for two states (Missouri and Kansas) and receiving the coveted certificates, she chose to continue her work with a non-profit hospice rather than taking her skills to the for profit world.
Stevie again started thinking “outside the box.” She reflected on all the patients, caregivers and bereaved she had encountered who were facing significant issues in addition to grief and loss. How could Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care better serve this complicated population experiencing depression, trauma, anxiety or PTSD? Stevie’s crisis response and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing training allowed her to begin treating these clients and ease their life changing transitions. She proposed a program, Passages, to concentrate on these struggling clients. The CEO and President recognized the value of this service to the community and gave the green light to this unheard of mental health service.
In an era when mental health services are being cut to the bone nationally, Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care and Stevie Shuchart are offering cutting edge services for very little out of pocket cost. Clients are singing her praises. CEO and President, David Wiley, was recently at a community event where he was approached by one her clients. She shared that Stevie had literally saved her life.
In addition to Stevie’s outstanding contributions as a social worker, she was instrumental in helping Kansas City Hospice become accredited by the National Institute of Jewish Hospice. Maintaining this accreditation helps Kansas City Hospice be more responsive to Jewish patients requiring end-of-life services.
Stevie’s unending dedication to clients and willingness to stretch and innovate in order to better serve them earned her this year’s Heart of Hospice Award, received on February 14 at an awards ceremony in Jefferson City.
Lisa Templeton-Farmer and Stevie Shuchart at 2018 Heart of Hospice Awards ceremony
Posted in General, Hospice Care, In the Community, News & Events, Stories of Support, Voices of Care