Thanks Dirty,
I have not tested your method, but I was able to solve this using another method.
I did so by using the following variable assignment:
(taskDoc is the XML for the task)
var items = taskDoc.Params;
var del = items.*::DeleteItem.@*::name.toString();
As a side note - this was indeed shown in the notifications package, contrary to what I stated in my question - I just wasn't looking in the right location.