The idea for the hospice was first aired back in 1989, a hospice closer to the Eastern Bays suburbs was sorely needed and the founding members thought this would also be a great way to mark the bicentenary of the Treaty of Waitangi. A few hundred dollars left over from a community event was the catalyst for fundraising to begin.

The hospice contact centre started as a rent-free room, a desk and a telephone based in board member Tim Willis’ law office in St Heliers. In conjunction with this our hospice service provision commenced with community support in the form of home visits offering moral support to those in need.

The Eastern Bays Hospice Trust (EBHT) formed in July of 1992, driving the vision, planning, fundraising and project development... and a dream of constructing a brand-new purpose-built facility that is now known as Dove House. Founding members of the Trust included Isabella Tedcastle, Richard Harris-Daw, Tim Willis, and Frank Dunne.

St Andrew’s Home (now St Andrew’s Village) generously gave permission to EBHT to build the hospice within its grounds in exchange for a peppercorn rent.  (In legal parlance, a peppercorn is a metaphor for a very small cash payment or other nominal consideration, used to satisfy the requirements for the creation of a legal contract).

An enormous number of service groups, businesses and private individuals pitched in. Scores of community groups hosted countless events and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.

These amazing fundraising efforts saw the savings for the hospice project reach nearly $400,000, almost half the $800,000 required.

A ‘Friends Fundraising Committee’ was established to further grow this start-up funding. This was supported by Isabella Tedcastle and various volunteers who were passionate about supporting their local community.

As fundraising support continued, it wasn’t long until the full amount required to build the Eastern Suburbs Hospice was raised. A massive $800,000 was raised and Eastern Bays Hospice ‘Hospice House’ (now ‘Dove House’) officially opened on 21st August 1999.

In the beginning, Dove House opened with just two staff members, nurse in charge Joan Monkton and office administrator Sherril Ewing. The hospice provided day-stay care for local people suffering from chronic life-threatening illness, thus allowing their carers respite. However, the ultimate aim was always to grow into a service that could provide overnight care and end-of-life care.

Paul Fahey Motors kindly lent the trust a car for a year so that the nurse-in-charge could visit patients in their own homes. This would see the hospice off to a flying start for the beginning of the 2000’s.

Initially we experienced a slow uptake from local GP’s to refer their patients for our hospice services.  This culminated in a change of plan and after much consideration and advice it was decided that rather than replicate the services offered by Mercy Hospice, that Eastern Bays Hospice should complement them and in doing so, better reflect the community’s needs.

As a result, a new, innovative vision for Eastern Bays Hospice was established to offer a non-medical model of care for people living with life threatening illness and in need of more than simply medical assistance. 

In 2001 a new face joined Eastern Bays Hospice. Former palliative care nurse, Janine Ewan, stepped into the role of Palliative Care Nurse Manager in response to the community’s needs.  Janine drove the transition to the new innovative programme of day-stay support services and wellness therapies.   As an organisation Eastern Bays Hospice was fortunate to have Janine’s expertise nurture and shape the organisation for a further 20 years during which time she transitioned to Clinical CEO.

In 2004, St Andrew’s began rebuilding its 24-hour hospital care facility. EBHT and St Andrew’s Trust got together and agreed to an exciting joint venture.

St Andrew’s agreed to build a three-bed hospice wing within St Andrew’s Douglas House, now named Dove Wing, with Eastern Bays Hospice funding the medical and nursing care and delivering end of life and respite care for service users.

After much consideration and research, the idea of opening a second-hand retail shop to fundraise was floated and soon the garage at Dove House was quickly filled with community donations. EBHT proceeded to open their first hospice shop on Mayfair Place, Glen Innes in 2004. This shop was run entirely by volunteers.

Following on from the success of the first hospice shop, two years later another hospice shop was opened on Apirana Avenue, Glen Innes.

With the increase in donations coming in from the local community for resale in our charity shops, the hunt for a distribution centre became an urgent matter. In 2009 a distribution centre for donated goods was opened on Felton Matthew Avenue, Glen Innes.

Eastern Bays Hospice Shop becomes the ‘new shop on the block’ on St Heliers Bay Road and in the Village. An additional opportunity for fundraising and to network with the Eastern Bay’s community.

With the additional funding support provided by our hospice shops, EBHT was able to expand our clinical services to meet the growing needs of the community. A Clinical Manager, Patricia Melville, was appointed and proved to be an asset to the clinical team for many years to follow.

In July of 2009, we opened our first e-commerce store utilising Trade Me. This allowed us to sell product throughout New Zealand and the opportunity to sell bulk, collectible or interesting items that could be used for repurposing. Set up by a member of staff, this store was soon in the caring hands of Heather Styris who came on board and as Volunteer Co-ordinator of this e-commerce store. Heather grew our Trade Me sales providing an important new source of revenue for Eastern Bays Hospice.

By the late 2000’s it was agreed that moving away from the word ‘hospice’ would better reflect the breadth of care and support Eastern Bays Hospice offered, and a decision was made to rename our hospice facilities, Dove House and Dove Wing. We also took this opportunity to re-brand our charity shops ‘Dove Hospice Shop’.

In June of 2011, Eastern Bays Hospice saw the opening day of their newest Dove Shop in Panmure. Staff opened the doors to 50-80 people waiting outside and keen to get in to grab preloved bargains.

Where would we be without our Dove Shops?  Thanks to the generous public who donated quality used goods, and to the staff and volunteers who worked at our four Dove Shops and e-commerce Trade Me store, EBHT raised close to $2 million in sales in 2012.

This provided vital additional funding to support the continuing growth in demand for the hospice services we provided at Dove House and Dove Wing.

Responding to community demand and having developed and proven we could operate

successful retail charity shops, Dove proceeded to open further Dove Hospice Shops in Remuera in 2014, and in the Meadowbank Shopping mall in 2017.

We wish to acknowledge and thank the steadfast support of Rotary, and in particular the Rotary Club of St Johns. Over the years Rotary assisted Dove in many ways including providing volunteers to run various garage and book sales. Most recently in 2021, the Rotary Club of St Johns in partnership with New World Stonefields hosted a golf tournament raising $23,000 for EBHT.

In response to the severe trading restrictions caused by the Covid pandemic and to further expand Dove’s brand presence and fundraising capability while our shops were closed Dove Hospice launched its second online store www.dovehospice.com.

Despite a challenging retail environment, the Dove team confident in their retail capability embraced the challenge and opened their 7th Dove Hospice Shop on Broadway Newmarket in April 2021. This decision further expanded Dove’s community reach and profile within Auckland. Our Newmarket shop is also home to our Online Kiosk which showcases a selection of product also available for purchase on our online shop www.dovehospice.com.

The same flexibility and creativity were embraced by our clinical team during the challenging period of Covid restrictions over the last two years. Our clinical team swiftly transitioned into delivering many of our services remotely by offering video or telephone consultations. This provided essential connectivity to our services much valued by our vulnerable service users during the past two years of the Covid pandemic.

During this time Dove also took the opportunity to review our branding to better describe the services we offer and chose to rename our clinical services ‘Dove Hospice & Wellness’.

Our purpose is to support and enhance wellness for those affected by life threatening illness. We do this by;

1. Improving our communities understanding of the services that we deliver.
2. Improving our communities accessibility to the services we deliver.
3. Continuing to evolve our service delivery to ensure it best meets the needs of our community.
4. Further developing and growing our retail and fundraising capability.
5. Investing in the skills and competencies of all our people.