Health care with a French accent planned

Aging-in-place residence will also offer bilingual health care to the public

Maurice Gaudet

By BILL GLEN
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

Aunique approach to health care for Alberta seniors is coming to the Bonnie Doon neighbourhood. Targeting the francophone community, all medical and support staff at the Centre de sante Saint-Thomas Health Centre will be fully bilingual.

The planned centre is a four-storey, 148,000 square foot facility to be built on the vacant 2.3-acre lot at 83rd Avenue and 91st Street that was once the site of a Filles de Jesus (Daughters of Jesus) convent.

Private units

The $24-million "aging-in-place" building will accommodate some 220 people in 200 private residential units and provide a primary health care centre open to the public.

Construction is slated to begin this month, with a projected opening in September 2007.

Services provided will depend on a person's wants or needs, from dementia patients, to supportive low-cost housing, to designated assisted living.

Thirty of the units will be "at-market" for anyone who wants to rent an apartment and live at the centre. Amenities packages will be available.

Maurice Gaudet, president of the Centre de sante Saint-Thomas Health Centre Society, says the prime targets for the centre are French-speaking seniors and all other seniors requiring assisted living and primary health care in a supportive and affordable housing environment.

All are welcome

Asked about a recent news report where a Cornwall, Ont., woman was denied treatment at a francophone health clinic there because French was not her first language, Gaudet says that will not happen here.

"The only thing we will have is that all employees must speak French and English," Gaudet said.

"The health centre will be open to the public. We won't be taking a blood test to see which language you speak."

Bilingual staff will be on-site 24 hours a day.

The Edmonton francophone community has been considering this project for about 10 years.

When the old convent site became available, Gaudet said the society "got its ducks in a row" and arranged financing to proceed.

The society has partnered with the Good Samaritan Society to offer health care services and outreach programs to residents and non-residents of all ages.

It will establish an interim health centre at the Good Samaritan's administration building on 75 Street (the former CBC building) later this year before moving over when the centre opens.

"When we first approached Capital Health for grant money, they told us we had no health experience.

"We were to align ourselves with somebody in the health care business," Gaudet said.

"We surveyed four groups and the Good Samaritans were at the top of our list. We signed a five-year contract at which time we should have our own people in place.

"They are helping us out and we are very thankful for that."

Francophone centre

More than 60,000 francophones live in Alberta, with almost 30,000 in Edmonton and area.

A hub of nearly 1,100 live in and around Bonnie Doon.

The centre will provide meal service with a dining room on each floor. The professionally trained staff will assist with bathing, personal hygiene, dressing and grooming.

There will be medical, social and recreational services, along with preventive and educational health care services. Occupational and physical therapy will be available.

It will not have its own chapel, but Father Ray Sevigny says there will be a spiritual connection with nearby St. Thomas d'Aquin Parish.

"There is a crying need for francophones to have this health centre," said Sevigny, pastor of St. Thomas d'Aquin.

"As people age, they return to their mother tongue and it's important that they be served in their language. The people who have designed this facility have been very compassionate that, whatever plan they had, it would be affordable."

The society is hoping to raise $2 million through its Brick by Brick campaign.

More than $650,000 has been donated so far.

For more information about the centre, contact Denis Collette at (780) 463-3572 or Greg Beland at (780) 989-3215.

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