Home Hospice Association
Professional Training
Individuals and families often find themselves navigating caregiving, decision making, serious illness, and grief without enough support.
Our professional training is built from lived experience and designed to strengthen non-medical, community-based care across diverse Canadian populations and settings.
The Need
Canada Needs More People Prepared to Support Others
Professionals, frontline workers, volunteers, and community leaders support people living with serious illness, with caregiving responsibilities, and through dying, death, and grief. They provide expertise in varied settings where people need compassionate, person-directed support, but may receive limited preparation for the emotional, practical, relational, and ethical realities that accompany their work. Individuals, organizations, and communities often struggle to respond with confidence when support is needed most.
LEARNING THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
Care Starts with Knowledge
Home Hospice Association's certificate based online education opportunities prepare people to support others through illness, caregiving, dying, death, grief, and loss utilizing evidence informed, experience-based learning. Grounded in non- medical approaches to end-of-life care, participants develop the practical skills, understanding, and confidence needed to strengthen compassionate care in the communities and organizations they serve across Canada.
Explore Our Learning Opportunities
Death Doula
Build the knowledge and confidence to support people through illness, caregiving, dying, death, and grief through flexible education designed for caregivers, professionals, and compassionate community members.
Infant & Pregnancy Loss Support
Between 15% and 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Others enter labour knowing their time with their baby may be brief. When people are facing difficult choices within moments that cannot be repeated, the presence of someone specifically prepared to care can make a profound difference.
MAiD
Increase your understanding of Medical Assistance in Dying and strengthen your ability to provide compassionate support when MAiD becomes part of the end-of-life journey.
Pediatric End of Life Care
Develop knowledge and skills related to the unique needs of children, their family and caregivers to confidently provide emotional, practical, and psychosocial support throughout a child’s illness journey.
Training Details Coming Soon
Funeral Celebrant
Learn to create meaningful ceremonies that honour stories, relationships, connection and legacy.
Training Details Coming Soon
How to Talk with Kids
Gain the skills and knowledge to answer questions and have age-appropriate conversations with children about experiences related to serious illness, dying, death and grief.
Training Details Coming Soon
Why This Education Matters
Strengthening Communities Across Canada
By increasing the number of people equipped to provide compassionate, knowledge-based support, that support becomes more accessible when and where it’s needed - wherever people live, work, learn, gather, and care for one another. Capacity grows, communities become stronger, and isolation is reduced.
Whether you are a healthcare professional, caregiver, volunteer, social services or spiritual care provider, educator, community leader, or someone wishing to make a difference, our training is designed to help you contribute to build stronger, more compassionate communities
Building Skills for Compassionate Support
What Makes Home Hospice Association Different
Our education is grounded in community based, non medical approaches to end of life care. We recognize that meaningful support happens not only within healthcare settings, but also through relationships, communities, and the people who choose to walk alongside others during difficult times. Participants gain practical knowledge and skills that help them:
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Support others with greater confidence and compassion.
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Strengthen communication and relationship building skills.
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Understand specialized approaches to grief, caregiving, companioning, MAiD, and pregnancy and infant loss.
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Apply learning within personal, volunteer, professional, and community settings.
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Contribute to stronger community responses surrounding illness, caregiving, dying, death, and grief.
Meet Our Death Educators
Glen Burkholder
Infant & Pregnancy Loss Doula Certificate Program, Pre & Perinatal Hospice, Death Doula Certificate Program, Our Babies, Our Grief
Glen is a co-founder of Home Hospice Association and has been a funeral director since 1986. Originally from the Niagara Region, he moved to Toronto in 2012. He is a member of the Niagara District Funeral Service Association and currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Toronto District Funeral Directors Inc. and the Ontario Funeral Service Association. In February 2023, Glen joined the team of McKersie & Early Funeral Home in Milton, Ontario. Glen is especially passionate about HHA’s continued education and training mission, and is deeply involved in the development and facilitation of the Death Doula and Infant and Pregnancy Loss Doula certificate programs. A proud father of two, Glen is committed to family and community. He has volunteered with Daval Hospice, Stamford Lions Club, Big Brothers Association of Niagara Falls, Niagara Falls Historical Museum Cemetery Tours, Niagara Falls Block Parent Association and the Knights of Columbus. Glen also enjoys getting his hands dirty with home repairs and renovations, and some of his favorite things to do include photography, the outdoors and enjoying a country drive on his motorcycle.
Cari Ferguson
Death Doula Certificate Program
Cari is a Fellow in Thanatology (FT) with the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) and a Certified Grief Educator. She is also a Registered Psychotherapist (RP) and a Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC) working in clinical practice in Toronto. She holds a Master of Psychospiritual Studies (MPS) degree with a Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy Certificate. Cari oversees HHA’s death doula training program. Cari is a passionate death and grief educator whose work is centred primarily around education, awareness, grief counselling, and spiritual care. She is dedicated to embracing and normalizing the difficult conversations we need to have about dying, death, grief, and caring for those on a grief journey. You can learn more about Cari at www.strongwinds.ca and https://cwcp.ca/clinician/cari-ferguson
Molly Hockin
Infant & Pregnancy Loss Support Certificate Program
Molly is a Registered Midwife in Ontario, practicing in the GTA. With her experience and passion for working with clients through perinatal loss and abortion, particularly through a home-centered midwifery model of care, Molly brings a wealth of knowledge to HHA as our Termination Subject Matter Expert. She also teaches the section on abortion for HHA’s Infant and Pregnancy Loss Doula training
Lisa Bonneville
Death Doula Certificate Program, MAiD and the Death Doula, Parents & Guardians Death Cafe, General Death Cafe
Lisa is a death doula and hospice and bereavement counsellor, as well as a facilitator for HHA’s Death Doula and MAiD and the Death Doula Certificate Programs. She believes that communication plays a huge role in preparing for end-of-life as well as the grief that follows. She’ll talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime about dying, death and everything in between. Most of Lisa’s experience is in residential hospice but she has also worked in long-term care, funeral homes and had the privilege of caring for palliative Catholic Nuns. Many people have had a hand in supporting and guiding her along the way to where she is today, and she does her best to pass on this wisdom and knowledge in her own teaching.
Jen Gillean
Infant & Pregnancy Loss Support Certificate Program
Jen is HHA’s Perinatal Program Manager, a Certified Childbirth Mentor, Birth & Bereavement Doula, and Yoga Therapist. She leads and coordinates the Infant & Pregnancy Loss Support Training and facilitates a variety of peer based groups to support those navigating grief with Métis Nation of Ontario, HHA and Birth Trauma Connections. Her work focuses on supporting individuals and families navigating fertility challenges, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and loss. She is particularly interested in trauma-informed and somatic approaches to care with a focus on nervous system regulation, grief support, birth & pelvic trauma recovery, as well as intimacy after birth.
Julie Anne Mauno
Infant & Pregnancy Loss Support Certificate Program
Julie-Anne is a Registered Perinatal Support Worker (PNSW), a faculty member for the PNSW program at Mohawk College, an Infant and Pregnancy Loss Doula (IPLD) and a Social Work student. She helped create HHA’s Our Babies, Our Grief and is part of HHA’s Death Education team for the Infant and Pregnancy Loss Doula Certificate program. She lives and works in Northeastern Ontario and is passionate about providing perinatal support to families, including infant and pregnancy loss support. Her interests include trauma-informed care, anti-oppressive practice, decolonization, perinatal grief support, and postpartum mental health and well-being.
Why This Training Matters
Strengthening Communities Across Canada
Every person who completes training with Home Hospice Association helps expand the availability of compassionate support within their community.
As more people become prepared to support others through illness, caregiving, dying, death, and grief, communities become stronger, isolation is reduced, and more individuals and families have access to meaningful support when they need it most.
That is how community capacity grows.
Join a growing national network committed to strengthening community based, non medical end of life care across Canada.
Organizations Strengthening End of Life Care with HHA
Chippawa Creek at Bella Care Residence, Dilico Anishinabek Family Care, Hospice Northwest Services, Eastern Health, Métis Nation of Ontario NACL — Nanaimo Association for Community Living