May 27, 2022
Dear St.Amant Families,
This isn’t our usual Covid-19 weekly update, as I want to address an article that appeared in the Free Press today that indicates “St.Amant Ceasing Operations”. This article was written in response to an invitation to a press conference we are hosting next week, where we will publicly announce the designation change to 440 River Road.
St.Amant’s residential services located at 440 River Road were designated a “developmental centre” under the “Vulnerable Persons Living with a Mental Disability Act” in 1993 by the Province of Manitoba. In 2013, we began in earnest to move away from long-term residential care in a congregate setting and to support people to move from River Road Place to live in the community. We also began to transition our services at 440 River Road to focus on short-term health, stabilization and respite services and also to support end of life care. These are services that our community and our funder have identified as critical to people with disabilities and their families. We renamed the service St.Amant Health & Transition Services and continue to admit new people into the service. There is no plan to cease operating.
At the same time, we continue to support people who have lived at 440 River Road for a long time, and are working with them and with our funders to support them to transition to live in the community. This process has been ongoing since well before 2013, but became the focus of our strategic vision at that time.
Essentially, the big changes have already happened – that we no longer admit people into long-term care at 440 River Road. And that we are supporting people to move to community. We will, however, continue to admit people for short-term stabilization, health, respite and for end of life care. We are grateful to our Board and our Funders that they have supported this transition to new services and that we still have an ability to use our expertise to best serve our community.
We see the future of St.Amant as continuing to innovate and change as the needs and desires of our community changes. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. As always, thank you for your ongoing support.
Thanks,
John