Government continues commitment to personal care homes

Health and Community Services Minister Julie Bettney said government will allocate an additional $1.3 million in Budget 2002 to provide increased funding to personal care homes and clients. The funding will be used to increase the number of subsidies for individuals and increase rates to personal care homes.

"This is the third consecutive year government has provided increased funding to individuals requiring the level of care offered by personal care homes and to the facilities which provide it," said Minister Bettney. The additional funding this year matches government�s investment in each of the two previous budgets. Government will now spend $13 million annually to obtain personal care home services for clients who require this level of care.

Currently, there are 82 personal care homes throughout the province and government anticipates there will be growth in this sector, particularly in the St. John�s region.

Minister Bettney stated that work continues on the development of a strategy for long-term care in this province. The Department of Health and Community Services continues its partnership with the Clinical Epidemiology Division of Memorial University to determine the long-term care needs of the province up to the year 2006. The strategy will provide a greater range of choices for people requiring long-term care based on their assessed needs. It will also be based on client choice and equity, provide options in a variety of services and will result in a natural continuum of care.

"We are now studying different models that exist for long-term care," said Minister Bettney. "While we know there will be a need for our traditional nursing homes, we also know there are models of care which are not institutional-based and which provide care in home-like settings for our seniors. We want to determine how we can incorporate the various models to meet our needs in this area into the future. Better models exist and we need to establish them in this province."

Media contact: Carmel Turpin, Communications (709) 729-1377.

2002 03 21                            3:10 p.m.