Pine_meadow

Jeff Green | Jul 26, 2007

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Pine Meadow Nursing Home seeking muicipal funding

by Jeff Green

The Pine Meadow Nursing Home in Northbrook shares many things with its more luxurious, municipally-owned neighbours to the south: the John Parrot Centre in Napanee and the Fairmount Home in suburban Kingston. It is a non-profit home serving an aging population, with a large percentage of residents that suffer from dementia; it receives funding from the Ministry of Health, donations and resident fees just like the other homes; and it serves the residents of Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Counties.

But unlike the other two homes, it does not receive municipal funding. The home’s management board would like to change that.

Board members Ann Chisholm and Ernest Lapchinski made a presentation to North Frontenac Council last week. They outlined how the home, which serves 60 residents, has been seeking funding from the Ministry of Health for a much-needed upgrade. Currently the majority of the rooms in the home have four beds in them, and the current standard for a long-term facility is for two and one-bed rooms.

With the recent announcement that a new home will be funded in Tweed, Pine Meadow staff and management see that an expansion and upgrade of Pine Meadow is unlikely in the near to mid-term, and they have decided to work towards some more modest improvements to the home.

“We’re in desperate need of storage and activity space, and we’d like to put in a physiotherapy department,” said Ann Chisholm when contacted by the News earlier this week.

Pine Meadow has been tentatively approved for a long-term loan of $250,000 for the work from Infrastructure Ontario. Pine Meadow has decided to seek municipal funding for the first time, and they are seeking a small percentage of the funds that are already allocated to long-term care - some of the monies that are spent on municipally run homes that serve people in the southern parts of Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Counties.

North Frontenac taxpayers pay about $125,000 annually towards the upkeep of the Fairmount home, where few, if any, North Frontenac residents live, Chisholm told Council. Pine Meadow is seeking $25,000 annually from Frontenac County.

“There is an issue of fairness here,” Ann Chisholm said. “Our taxpayers are funding a nursing home they are not using, and the home that they are using is receiving no funding from the municipalities.”

North Frontenac Council expressed sympathy for Pine Meadow’s situation, and the issue has been raised in the past by North Frontenac councilors at Frontenac County joint council meetings.

The Pine Meadow delegation will be taking their concerns to a meeting of the Frontenac County Council They will also be attending a meeting of Addington Highlands Council.