Ontario approves new beds for Lambton County dementia care project

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Lambton County received news Thursday the province is supporting a local plan to develop a specialized 10-bed unit at Lambton Meadowview Villa near Petrolia to care for residents living with dementia.

Ontario announced it has allocated 10 additional beds for the county-operated long-term care home where Lambton officials have been making plans to convert unused space for a program that will take a new approach to caring for some residents living with dementia.

It was part of an announcement of a large number of long-term projects approved across the province, including one for Watford Quality Care Centre. The province said that facility has been allocated 33 new and 63 upgraded spaces for a project that will result in a 96-bed home in Watford after renovations and an addition.

The provincial announcement didn’t include funding figures for the individual projects.

“The number of people in Sarnia-Lambton who will need long-term care is expected to rise over the next decade,” Sarnia-Lambton MPP Bob Bailey said in a news release. “Today’s announcement will help ensure we have safe, modern spaces ready for them.”

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“There are a number of models throughout the world to support people with dementia that are very different from how we do it in Canada and in Ontario,” Jane Joris, general manager of the county’s long-term care division, said previously about the project at Lambton Meadowview Villa.

“Putting large groups of people together – although it appears efficient – is not always the best way to provide care.”

The county division has three homes – Lambton Meadowview Villa, the North Lambton Rest Home in Forest and Marshall Gowland Manor in Sarnia – with a combined 339 beds. All three homes have a traditional design, with large numbers of mostly older residents, who need extensive care and support, grouped together on floors or in units.

Long-term care is also home to a large percentage of residents with some form of dementia who are “already having difficulty making sense of their world, and we’re putting them into a very strange situation,” Joris said.

As well as grouping just 10 residents together, the new model proposed for the project is designed around connecting with residents emotionally, Joris said.

Lambton is proposing to use an approach known as the Eden Alternative which focuses on avoiding loneliness, and making sure residents have social connections and meaningful activities.

Warden Kevin Marriott called Thursday’s announcement, “excellent news.”

Marriott said he was still waiting to hear details on timing of the new beds and how the project will be developed.

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“It’s just an unbelievable step in the right direction,” he said.

The environment people will live in as part of the new unit will also be taken into consideration, with safe places for residents to be outdoors, privacy and space to gather with others in the household in a way that’s familiar, Joris has said.

Each resident in the proposed project would have their own bedroom with a private washroom and eat meals together around a table, like a family, instead of in a large dining room, under the proposal.

Previously, the county said renovating space at Meadowview Villa for the unit would cost about $4 million, and it’s operation would add $520,000 a year to the county’s budget.