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Housing Project Improves Life for Elderly
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Housing Project Improves Life for Elderly
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Wednesday,
July 11, 2001
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The Ministry of Health, through its Division of Human Services, is making
significant headway in improving the living conditions of elderly and disabled
persons through a home building and renovation initiative.
Launched in 1999, the project has already built or renovated 106 homes, according to Project Officer, Augustine Compton. He said a total of 72 homes around the island benefited under phase one of the project. “In the second phase, because of our experiences of the first phase, we decided to do four homes per constituency. Four out of 17 constituencies, you have 64 homes as our initial target,” Compton explained.
Identification of beneficiaries is done by the constituency representative and the Department of Human Services in some cases.
Director of Human Services, Felicia Robinson, said her Department is committed to improving the living conditions of all St. Lucians. In the case of the elderly, she said, this concern extended to their overall well-being. She explained “In the event that you need to reconstruct an entire new home, (we ask) what are the kinds of interim provisions that you need to make for these older people to ensure that they are safe while the construction phase is going on.”
“The other thing may be that (while) you decide that they do need to have a new home, we may go in and realize it is not just the absence of a good home that is impacting upon them but some other social conditions.
“We may have to refer them so that they can get adequate medical care, we may need to provide some financial assistance to make sure that they just don’t have a place to sleep but that they have a meal to eat, or that they have other support to ensure that their total well-being is looked after,” she added. |
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