Home For Christmas: Bringing Families Together

When hospitals prepare for the Christmas period and families hope to bring loved ones home for the holidays, that’s when Enable New Zealand’s palliative care support service steps up. Thanks to the organisation’s commitment to delivering as much essential palliative care equipment as they can within 24 hours of the request being made, sick and dying people across Canterbury are spending precious time together at home with their families this Christmas.

The service supplies and installs more than 160 types of equipment - from hospital beds to shower stools - across the region, from Kaikōura to Ashburton and across to Arthur’s Pass. Patients receiving this equipment can be returning home from hospital or hospice, or already be at home and now need extra support.

Demand for the service surges in the lead-up to Christmas as families try to have people at home and hospitals prepare for holiday peaks. In a recent week, the team delivered and installed 249 items to South Island families and collected 171, highlighting the scale and urgency of the need.

“Our job is to make it possible for people to be at home with their family in the final months, weeks or days of their lives,” says Jane Wenman, Chief Operations officer at Enable NZ. “Led by Geoff Webster for the last 15 years, the team does everything they can to deliver within 24 hours, so no one has to wait. Time is so precious for the community we serve — especially at Christmas.”

Every item provided is not only cleaned and checked for safety, but also regularly blessed by local kaiwhakawātea (a person who performs karakia to spiritually clear and prepare a space or object). This practice honours those who have used the equipment previously and prepares it for those who will use it next.

With a team of six dedicated staff, including three drivers, Enable NZ works closely with more than 60 occupational therapists to ensure patients can remain at home, surrounded by loved ones. The team assemble equipment in the home, teach families how to use it, and collect it when it’s no longer needed.

“It’s rewarding, but it can be emotionally tough for our team,” says Jane. “Our drivers in particular deal with grief and loss every day, and we support each other through it.” The team regularly receives messages of thanks from families, expressing their gratitude for the care, compassion, and dignity provided at such a critical time.

“We’re a small team, but we’re making a big difference. At Christmas, that matters more than ever.”

About the programme

Enable New Zealand’s Christchurch Palliative Care Equipment Service operates on behalf of Health NZ to provide rapid home delivery of equipment for people at the end of life across Canterbury. The service supplies, delivers, assembles, and collects more than 160 types of specialist equipment—including hospital beds, hoists, and shower stools. All items are thoroughly cleaned, safety-checked, and regularly blessed by local kaiwhakawātea, honouring those who have used them before and preparing them for those who will use them next.

About Enable New Zealand

Enable New Zealand is the leading supplier of disability equipment, information and modification services in Aotearoa New Zealand. Every year they support over 176,000 New Zealanders to live everyday lives in their community. They have contracts with the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), Disability Support Services (DSS), and Health New Zealand (HNZ) to help provide and manage their assistive technology / disability equipment services.

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