Each morning at 6:30 a.m. Juanita Linthorne, an individual care worker at Michener Centre in Red Deer, starts her workday by organizing medications for her clients as other staff trickle in.
Each morning at 6:30 a.m. Juanita Linthorne, an individual care worker at Michener Centre in Red Deer, starts her workday by organizing medications for her clients as other staff trickle in. The Penhold resident with 31 years of experience at the facility goes on to spend the rest of the day bathing residents, preparing their meals and taking them to different activities.
"We treat people here as family members to us," she said. "You work with them for so long and we know them so well, all their little idiosyncrasies."
When the province announced this home for people with developmental disabilities would close as part of the 2013 fiscal plan it hit Linthorne hard.
"That’s what it feels like to us, like they’re taking our family away," she said. "It all comes down to money."
On April 8 Penhold council voted unanimously to throw its weight behind opposition from the City of Red Deer to the closure and to send letters to members of the provincial government and Alberta Health Services, Innisfail-Sylvan Lake MLA Kerry Towle and Red Deer’s municipal government as part of the push to keep the facility open.
The closure of Michener Centre’s institutional facilities will affect about 125 of the centre’s 230 residents and 400 staff members may lose their jobs within one year.
"It affects us," said Coun. Kathy Sitter, who brought the issue forward, noting several of the staff members live in Penhold. "I just think as a good neighbour we should support the City of Red Deer in their fight to keep Michener Centre open."
Last week Associate Minister of Services for Persons with Disabilities Frank Oberle said the government will save $110,000 per resident moved out of the facility and that the money would be reinvested in the Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) program.
Penhold CAO Rick Binnendyk said it seems the government is shutting Michener Centre down arbitrarily with no plan for where the clients will go.
"There’s been a lot of renovations done. The place is actually in very nice shape. Now they’re just closing it which people are finding really strange," he said. "To move them into group homes would be a huge, huge step backwards in the level of care for these kind of clients, which I think would be very detrimental."
Coun. Danielle Klooster noted over the years that the facility, which used to be a cloistered institution, has become a great place for vulnerable individuals to live.
"It just doesn’t make financial, social, moral sense," she said of the government’s decision. "Also there is the possibility for the government to sell off entire sections of land that won’t impact that core operation and would mean those people could live out their lives there."
Closing Michener Centre will only compound previously existing problems in the health-care system, she said.
"We know that we are very short of long-term care beds in this province and there are people actually in acute care beds in our hospitals who need to be in long-term care," she said. "And now we’re going to potentially continue to keep those people in the high-cost acute care beds while we move folks out of Michener Centre."
Linthorne says she’s worried the individuals she takes care of won’t get the same level of care in the community as they do right now.
"I can accept that one day this place was going to close. Just putting them into the community is what we have such a hard time with," she said. "Some of them are very fragile."
She’s also concerned about her own future, and notes she knows at least three other Penhold residents who work at Michener Centre.
"We’ve got mortgages; we’ve got bills," she said. "Now what about our pensions?"
