“We have been left behind. It’s as if the ministry was no longer interested in caregivers,” laments Nathalie Déziel, director of the Regroupement des Aides et Aides Naturels de Montréal. She finds it difficult to digest the closure, earlier this week, of the Maison Gilles-Carle in Montreal, for lack of sufficient help from the Ministry of Health and Social Services of Quebec.
The Maison Gilles-Carle was located in the Center Évasion, an establishment in the borough of Côte-des-Neiges — Notre-Dame-de-Grâce which offered temporary accommodation to people with a loss of autonomy and a little respite for their caregivers. The center was forced to close its doors on April 30, and to lay off about twenty employees.
“This place was my whole life”, breathes Ramona Mincic, owner and director of the establishment. The center had been struggling to pay rent “for a little over a year,” she said, because “payments [qu’elle] expected from the Ministry arrived months late” and that the amounts he had been promised “have never been indexed.
This is why M.me Déziel affirms that the financing of resources which make it possible to facilitate the work of caregivers “has never been adequate”.
The Regional Round Table on Caregivers of Montreal (TCRPAM), of which it is a part, recalls, however, in a press release sent Thursday, that the government was committed to better supporting them. The Government Action Plan for Caregivers 2021-2026 contains various measures in this regard. “The continued development of respite services at the Maisons Gilles-Carle is explicitly mentioned in measure 45 of the action plan”, indicates the TCRPAM in its press release.
The Gilles-Carle Foundation also specifies on its website that the Government of Quebec had committed, in 2019, to building 20 Houses.
However, “the Maison Gilles-Carle de Boucherville had to close its doors for similar reasons in 2020, the Maison de Terrebonne is struggling to hold on and the centers everywhere else are reducing their services”, sighs Luc Chulak, vice-president of the council. Center Évasion Board of Directors. Nine Maisons are currently open across the province.
Remember that the organization that helps caregivers takes its name from the late filmmaker. He had Parkinson’s disease. He benefited from the care of his wife, the artist Chloé Sainte-Marie, for more than 17 years.
Late rent payments
Mme Mincic was very optimistic when funding for the Maison Gilles-Carle in Montreal was approved in 2019, at the instigation of the Minister responsible for Seniors and Caregivers at the time, Marguerite Blais. “The problem is that the amounts have never been adjusted since the pandemic, she laments. And we were always getting our funding late. For example, one year, when I was supposed to receive a grant on April 15, and I received it on June 15”.
In a press release, the Evasion Center specifies that the owner of the building is forcing them to leave, because he “considers that the rental commitments have not always been respected”.
“Of course, we had to delay the payment of our rent on a few occasions, even if it has always been made, specifies the center. These annoyances related to our obligations are not, however, due to bad intentions on our part. They stem from numerous difficulties in obtaining the amounts agreed upon, by agreement, from the Government of Quebec. »
By email, the office of the Minister for Health and Seniors, Sonia Bélanger, replies that it is rather the CIUSSs who accompany “all the beneficiaries as well as their loved ones in order to offer them an alternative to the respite service”. Mme Mincic maintains, however, that she met “representatives of the ministry” twice, without success.
The CIUSSS du Centre-Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal has also acknowledged receipt of the request for comments from the Dutybut had still not reacted at the time of this writing.
In addition, the minister’s office indicates that “steps are underway for a new location so that the Maison Gilles-Carle Évasion de Montréal can continue its activities”. A solution “will be found to ensure the availability of services”, we are told.
However, M.me Mincic warns that “if the ministry does not provide adequate funding for a new venue,” it will refuse to get involved in the project. “The government tells the media that they are working with me, but I’m still waiting for a call.”