We at St. Paul’s L’Amoreaux Centre (SPLC) were very pleased to host a visit from the Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Bob Bell, and other Ministry staffers along with senior staff of the Central East LHIN.
The occasion was a tour of health providers in the Central East LHIN and SPLC was the first stop of the day on Friday November 7th. It was an opportunity for the Deputy Minister to learn about emerging and innovative health services offered in Scarborough before moving eastwards to visit other health providers.
In a joint presentation, with Kelly Kay, Executive Director of the Seniors Care Network, we explained the role of GAIN (Geriatric Assessment and Intervention Network) in the context of the “community hub” of services offered at SPLC. Amanda Falotico, our Director of Care Services, presented to Dr. Bell about the wide range of services we offer to support seniors to continue living at home – everything ranging from hot meals in our Meals on Wheels program, to mobility through our Transportation program and activation and caregiver relief from our Day Programs. She was followed by Shirin Vellani, Nurse Practitioner Team Lead in our GAIN Community Team. Shirin shared a patient story to illustrate the complexity of conditions and circumstances that seniors can be living with and how our GAIN team reached out and helped.
Also presenting to the group were Nancy Veloso of the Scarborough Hospital and Helen Leung of Carefirst Seniors and Community Services Association about their collaborative work on integrating hospital and community care.
The visit culminated with a tour of our clinic space shared by our Wellness Clinics and the GAIN Community Team.
We thoroughly enjoyed an informative and stimulating discussion about the value of offering care and services in the community and future opportunities for making seniors’ services even more person-centred and accessible.
Many thanks to our visitors:
- Dr. Bob Bell – Deputy Minister
- Susan Fitzpatrick – Associate Deputy Minister
- Kathryn McCulloch, Director, LHIN Liaison Branch
- Patrick Dicerni – Director, Policy and Delivery
- Deborah Hammons – Central East LHIN
- James Meloche – Central East LHIN
- Stewart Sutley – Central East LHIN
- Karen O’Brien - Central East LHIN
- Marla Fryers – The Scarborough Hospital
- Nancy Veloso – the Scarborough hospital
- Helen Leung, Carefirst Seniors and Community Services Association
- Kelly Kay, Seniors Care Network
