For
Immediate Release
July 14, 2006
Carleton Place, Ontario - After almost two years of questions and pressure from Lanark-Carleton MPP Norm Sterling, McGuinty's Minister of Community and Social Services has finally met with the Rideau Regional Centre Association (RRCA). This group, which represents the families of the residents of the Rideau Regional Centre (RRC), had been ignored by the McGuinty government ever since it announced in September 2004, that the Centre and its two sister facilities would close in 2009.
On July 6, members of the RRCA traveled to Toronto to meet with new Community and Social Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur. This followed two letters requesting a meeting and calls by Mr. Sterling in the Legislature that the Minister meet the group.
"I am pleased that Minister Meilleur is at least willing to listen to the families, something that former Minister Sandra Pupatello refused to do," said Mr. Sterling. "I can only hope that she will take their concerns seriously and work with them to ensure their loved ones continue to receive the level of care and security that they receive at RRC."
Association president Conni Scott, whose 40-year-old son has lived at RRC for 32 years, was pleased to finally meet with the Minister. "After two years of being ignored, it was a great relief to be able to explain our concerns to the person who can do something to help us," said Ms Scott. "I want to thank Mr. Sterling for his ongoing efforts to ensure our concerns were heard."
While the Minister wouldn't discuss keeping the centres open, Ms Scott says the Minister did agree to work with the Association to develop a mutually agreeable discharge process. This would satisfy the court-ordered requirement that families must approve the facilities into which residents are moved, something that the previous Minister claimed was happening while some families said otherwise.
"This agreement to work to develop a discharge process that is agreeable to the families is a good first step," said Norm. "However, the Minister must now prove that her ministry can deliver the same level of services in the community as these individuals have been receiving in the residential centres. Both the process and the services should have been in place when the closure of these facilities was announced, but as usual this government moved forward on this without a plan."
Located outside of Smiths Falls, RRC houses 382 severely developmentally disabled adults, many of whom have lived there for forty years or more. Former Minister Pupatello announced on September 9, 2004 that this facility and two others would close in 2009.
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For more information, please
call Lanark-Carleton MPP Norm Sterling at: (613) 253-1171