A clear and sincere apology.
That's what former residents of enriched housing at St. Mary's Villa and their families say they still want from the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR).
At the end of February, 10 residents of the enriched housing units at St. Mary's Villa were forced to move with eight days notice, in order to allow residents of Dust Wing to move into their space. A preliminary engineering report on the floors at Dust Wing stated that the wooden trusses that form the foundation for that wing were splitting.
The tenants of enriched housing and their families have stated that they understand why the move had to occur, but have issues with how the move was conducted by the SHR.
The former enriched housing tenants, families and representatives of the SHR got together in Humboldt last week for a "debriefing" meeting on March 8.
The SHR
It was "an important meeting for us," said Maura Davies, CEO of the SHR, who was present at the debriefing, along with about 20 individuals, including tenants and their family members.
The SHR updated the tenants on the final engineering report on Dust Wing, Davies said, and asked them to share their experiences in moving from the Villa.
"We are interested in learning what we could have done better," Davies said.
The SHR had already done some internal reviews of the situation, she noted, and they will continue to do so as part of a continuous learning process.
Davies said the main thing everyone agreed on was that the short time frame of the move "was a major source of stress and frustration for everyone."
The SHR, she added, "could have done better" in handling other aspects of the move as well.
Communication was one area "where we clearly did not do a good job," Davies said.
Information was not presented as clearly as it possibly could have, or was not given to everyone, she indicated.
Davies said that what drove the SHR to have the enriched housing residents move out so quickly was a time frame in the preliminary engineering report.
That report gave the SHR 30 days to address the major structural issues with the floor in Dust Wing, if it was going to be safe to have staff and residents living and working there. Because they couldn't do the work to fix the structure in 30 days, that meant relocating those residents to keep them and Villa staff safe, Davies noted.
"That's what really pushed us."
When they realized they would have to move the seniors from the enriched housing units, they knew there were alternatives for them in the community, she said.
However, "we certainly underestimated how stressful and difficult it would be for them to make the move at short notice," she stated.
They focused on the residents in Dust Wing, and did not consider the impact on the enriched housing residents, she said.
What complicated matters was that renovations had to be done to the enriched housing units, including the installation of a nurse call system, in order to make the rooms appropriate for those needing higher levels of care. Those renovations had to be done before residents of Dust Wing could move in.
They knew it was not going to be a simple "move out, move in," Davies agreed.
Jim Ramsay, whose mother, Alice, was one of the enriched housing residents forced to move, has stated he believes that the SHR used the flooring issues in Dust Wing as an excuse to get out of offering enriched housing.
"That is not the case," Davies stated.
Though offering enriched housing is "an anomaly for us" - the Villa had the only enriched housing units run by the SHR - that was not why the move was made.
"Absolutely the safety of the residents and the staff of Dust Wing... that and that alone was driving this decision," Davies noted.
Davies also stated that the SHR has apologized to the enriched housing tenants and their families many times, in person and in writing, not just for the situation, but for how it was handled.
"We will continue to do that," she said.
The decisions that they made were made for the right reasons, she said - for the safety of the residents.
"How we handled that, implementing the change, we should have done much better," she noted, adding that they have learned from it.
Davies commended the Villa staff for the compassionate care they have given during this process.
"As this thing has unfolded, it didn't go as well as anyone would have wanted... but we have a good and dedicated staff out there."
The families
"It was good in terms of being able to sit down with all the other families in the same room at the same time," said Ramsay of the debriefing session with the SHR.
"It's good to know everyone experience very much the same problems," he noted, and that the families are focused on holding the SHR responsible for how they treated the tenants and their families.
They shared stories of their experiences during the move, Ramsay said, "and everyone's got a story of extreme suffering... that goes to the heart and core of the human person."
In one case, a tenant was undressed when workers came into her room at the Villa to remove a window.
"The stories keep getting worse," Ramsay said.
But the meeting was also frustrating, he noted.
All of the apologies from the SHR have been "We are sorry you were in stress, not for causing stress," he said.
The SHR has not accepted responsibility for causing the situation, he feels.
"We haven't got the apology we're looking for yet," he said, that's what was very clear from the families at the meeting.
"Until the Region steps forward publicly with a clear and sincere apology about the pain and suffering they have caused the evictees through their actions, their words are seen to be hollow," Ramsay stated. "Actually, this apology should be in public, in writing and to the satisfaction of the evictees and their families. Anything less than this will be perceived as hollow and disingenuous."
Ramsay was also disappointed with the answers provided by the SHR to some of the questions that were asked at the meeting.
At the end, he said, he asked two questions of the SHR: who is responsible for this fiasco, and do you honestly believe the SHR did anything right in this situation?
Davies, as CEO, stated that she was ultimately responsible, Ramsay said.
"She owned up to it," he stated.
In answer to the second question, Ramsay said they stated that they have spoken to other families "who are not as disappointed as you appear to be."
In Ramsay's opinion, the SHR "has done nothing right in this process."
At the meeting, there was a lot of discussion about how the tenants of enriched housing were "dehumanized" and segregated from the 32 residents from Dust Wing who were being relocated as well.
"The problem is that no one ever thought of these people as human beings," Ramsay said.
One outcome of the meeting, Ramsay added, was that the families have gelled, and a majority plan to approach the SHR's director of risk management as a group to get this situation resolved.
Two things, he added, will make this thing go away: a proper apology from the SHR, where it is clearly admitted that it caused damages, and compensation to the tenants for their pain and suffering, to ensure that they won't have to move in a year's time.
