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One-stop care for children with disabilities

New rehab centre to bring services together

By: Bruce Owen

Posted: 08/24/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Pat Locken says service for families will be much improved with the new centre.

The frustration of zipping from one appointment to another will soon be over for hundreds of parents with disabled children once a new "one-stop shop" rehabilitation centre in a former garment factory opens in 2012.

And for families like Pat Locken's it can't come soon enough. Locken is a family representative on the new project and has a 17-year-old granddaughter with cerebral palsy.

Enlarge Image

The new children's rehabilitation centre will be housed in an 87,000-square-foot former apparel factory on Notre Dame Avenue. (ARTIST'S RENDERING)

"My daughter is a single mom who tries to get her daughter to appointments," she said. "When you have a child with a disability it's not just meeting them at the school at four o'clock and rushing them off to a doctor's appointment. It means taking a day off work. "Having this location with all the service providers in one spot... you can get multiple appointments in one day under one roof. It will be a much improved service and money better spent for the province."

The new centre in the former MWG Apparel factory at 1147 Notre Dame Ave. will replace the current Rehabilitation Centre for Children (RCC) on Wellington Crescent near Academy Road. The site, the former Shriner's Hospital, is too small and is threatened by riverbank erosion. The province owns the building and a decision has not been made what to do with it once the new centre opens.

Housing and Community Development Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross said the move, 10 years in the making, is due to the families of disabled children lobbying for a more effective and convenient system to help their disabled kids, be it a getting a medical appointment, physiotherapy or a new wheelchair.

"This wouldn't have happened without the families," Irvin-Ross said.

"Over the last 10 years, we have worked on this tirelessly to ensure that this would become a reality."

The centralized rehabilitation centre was promised by the NDP during the 2007 election campaign. The province is providing $16.7 million towards the project.

Currently, the RCC gets about 22,000 visits a year. It's estimated the centre will get about 90,000 visits as it's also closer to the airport, so out-of-town families will use it, too.

Over the next two years, the 87,000-square-foot building will be renovated to house the new Specialized Services for Children and Youth (SSCY).

SSCY is an alliance of Manitoba Health, Manitoba Family Services, Consumer Affairs, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) and a number of service agencies.

RCC executive director Cheryl Susinski said the new centre will better use scarce resources to help families and their children move with greater ease through the medical system.

WRHA regional director of primary health care Jeanette Edwards said the goal of the new project is to put services for disabled children in one place so families aren't referred to services, "in 10 different directions."

"Rather than focusing on building, we saw this as an opportunity to bring services to people," she said. "So many families had talked about having to go to the Health Sciences Centre, the rehabilitation centre for children, St. Amant -- it's very difficult for them."

Edwards added a capital campaign will soon be launched by the RCC to raise more funds for the relocation.

Included in the project will be services for communication disorders, a child development clinic for alcohol and drug-exposed children, a newborn follow-up clinic, home care and respite services and pediatric rehabilitation services.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 24, 2010 B1

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