Easter Seal House in P.G. To Be Sold
Wednesday, February 27, 2013 @ 6:00 AM
Prince George, B.C. – March is Easter Seals month, but funds raised will not be going to assist the Easter Seal House in Prince George.
The home at 1685 Carney Street has been closed, and will be sold.
Operated by the B.C. Lions Club, President Steve Miller says the Prince George house was closed last week “ We found that the house was not very well used. There was less than 3 people staying at the house, on average, so there were some nights we had no one at all.”
Miller says it was costing more than $50 thousand dollars a year to run the Carney Street home, “ It was becoming tough for us to justify to our donors that we were spending that much money to provide so little service in the Northern Interior through that house.”
Miller says the B.C. Lions’ mandate is primarily to assist children with disabilities, and of the less than 3 people who stayed (on average) at the Easter Seal House in Prince George no more than one had a child related issue they were dealing with. “Not only were we not satisfying our mandate, but we were having a difficult time justifying it’s existence.”
There are two other East Seal Houses in B.C, one in Vancouver, another in Victoria. The funds from the sale of the Prince George Easter Seal House, and the savings from not having to operate it, will be channelled into renovations at the Vancouver Easter Seal House.
“We serve a tremendous amount of families and children from the Northern Interior at our Vancouver Easter Seal House” says Miller. The Vancouver house has 100 beds and over 9,000 bed nights a year had been used by families from the Northern Interior, of that number 3,000 bed nights had been used by families from Prince George. “So when we started to look at those numbers, we decided to close the Prince George house, and to take whatever funds we get from it and put it into the Vancouver Easter Seal House, specifically to renovating a Northern Interior wing.”
The Carney Street home first opened in July of 1983, and was known as the Northern Interior Easter Seal House. Miller says the primary donors to the Prince George home fully support the closure and the shifting of support to the Vancouver facility.
Comments
Haldi Road annex?
I am pleased that the house was available for all those years. Think of the people it helped. From the article, it would seem that a wise choice is being made.
“It was becoming tough for us to justify to our donors that we were spending that much money to provide so little service in the Northern Interior through that house”
Very strange coming out of nowhere with no additional background for people who are not involved.
I thought we needed services such as this.
Here we have an organization which offers services to those with some special needs, presumably while they are here for a hospital stay from out of town, but it appears we do not have enough in need.
Looks like the only one surviving is the Vancouver one, and possibly Victoria.
Gus… it might be that most of these people in need are heading to Vancouver because the services they require are not available in PG. Or if they are available in PG, they can go home the same or next day.
When this house was first established 1983, there was no Northern Health Connections Bus running.
Just a thought.
I do not think it is “just” a thought. It is a good thought. ;-)
Which then leads me to wonder about emerging needs. We now have a Cancer treatment centre. We also have the Kordyban lodge. As I understand it, the Easter Seal House(s) are specialized for children. On the assumption that the Cancer Treatment Centre caters to all ages, does the Kordyban Lodge cater to all ages?
I think we are missing some spoon feeding here for those of us who are interested in what goes on in the community and do not always want to do research that several people might be independently doing. It would be gret that whenever a change like that happens that an outreach information takes place which defines the way things worked for people accessing health care, as in this case, under the previous systems and facilities versus the new and improved system and facilities from a fully integrated point of view.
Harbinger, you need an outside interest; maybe a job. Your opinions are getting very, very boring.
Why not close IPG too?
From what I understood the Cancer Clinic here is not going to be handling children’s cancers, those cases will still go to Vancouver.
Runner46. Just for saying that I am just gonna throw my pink t-shirt right into the garbage. Obviously it doesn’t work. Boo hoo hoo. Human Rights Commission here I come. In the phone book under “justice”?
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