Campaign to save nursing home takes to streets

Date Published: 23-Jun-2011

By Bernie Ní Fhlatharta

A petition to save the only community nursing home in the city is to hit the streets on Saturday. Councillor Catherine Connolly says it is time to “stand up and be counted” in relation to the threat of closure of St Francis Nursing Home in Newcastle.

With the support of patients’ families, Cllr Connolly will be pounding the city centre streets tomorrow to kick off a campaign to keep it open and to raise awareness of what is happening at the facility.

The HSE announced some months ago that they would be phasing out the home and eventually closing it, but Cllr Connolly said that management had already started proactively encouraging families to relocate their loved ones to private nursing homes.

Cllr Connolly has campaigned for years for the home to be kept open as it is the only public nursing home in the city. There were moves last year to relocate the residents in St Francis to a unit in Merlin Park hospital, but that was strongly resisted and it didn’t happen.

There used to be a five year waiting list for a bed in the home such was its popularity. There are currently 30 long term beds and 20 day beds to facilitate day patients and in recent years there was a physiotherapy facility established on the premises.

“I have received the most urgent representations in relation to patients in the home from families who are extremely worried at the proposal by HSE management to move patients to private nursing homes and close down the facility,” Cllr Connolly said.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.