A meeting concerning Broadacres Care Facility will not be taking place this week as originally anticipated.
While supporters of the care facility were hoping to meet with Interior Health (IH) tonight (Wednesday, May 11) at the Senior's Centre, local resident Laura Lodder said that the meeting was put on hold after Interior Health declined an invitation.
“We’re disappointed that they’re not going to participate in the meeting that we had planned so we’re postponing it to another date,” Lodder explained.
“We want to keep the door open to communicate with them so we can do right to this community.”
Interior Health (IH) said that attending the meeting could give people the impression that it would change its mind about residential care beds in Grand Forks – the health authority recently awarded 40 beds to Golden Life Management.
“We were asked to attend this meeting; however, our understanding is the intent of this meeting is to lobby Interior Health to reverse its decision regarding the location of residential care beds in the community,” explained IH East’s Residential Health Service Administrator Cindy Kozak-Campbell.
“Our decisions for both the temporary and permanents beds were made using a clear set of formal criteria, the same we would use to evaluate any residential care provider. We are comfortable the right decisions were made in the best interest of providing quality care to clients requiring service.
“We have provided meeting organizers with the information about how Interior Health came to its decision and have had numerous conversations directly with Broadacres.”
Kozak-Campbell went on to say that IH’s attendance at the meeting might have raised expectations that the health authority would reverse its decision.
“We’re not in a position to do that,” she said.
Broadacres proprietor Rod Gustafson had made an application to IH after a request for proposals for the beds was made in December.