Nurse fighting to open first long-term care home for younger adults in Sask. to address lack of services

Saskatchewan families with medically fragile adult children are advocating for the province's first long-term care home to meet the needs of people who aren't kids or senior citizens. 

For three years, Kerrie Elliot has been trying to open Feather Ridge, a facility geared toward young adults aged 18 to 55 who need 24-hour care.

The registered psychiatric nurse said she noticed a gap in services that she wanted to fill for families who had adult children with high medical needs, disabilities or brain injuries. 

"It is heartbreaking for the families to put their 15-year-old in long-term care with seniors. Those youths, they're medically fragile, but they live for decades and they unfortunately live in seniors homes with the seniors dying around them," said Elliot.

"Their parents then have to relinquish their child into an environment that isn't meant for them, isn't staffed for them, and they have no quality of life and no peer interactions."

Elliot purchased a building in Christopher Lake, Sask., 40 kilometres north of Prince Albert, that was formerly a personal care home. It has 10 beds and lifts.

The building itself is designed like a home. Clients would be able to customize their rooms, get physiotherapy, do outdoor activities and take day trips.

Elliot said she has been to the legislative building advocating for Feather Ridge throughout the years, has hired nurses to provide care, and has a waitlist of 18 people. She said what is holding her back from opening is government funding which she would like in order to keep costs low for families.

"There's no box to put us in, the bouncing between health and social services," said Elliot. 

"The bouncing back and forth with the facility or the project — it is the same thing that these families face. This is the same, you know, 'you don't fit here, you don't fit there.' And that's why they slip through the cracks." 

The Saskatchewan Royal Purple is an official sponsor helping with fundraising because Feather Ridge would accept those with traumatic brain injuries, a cause adopted by the society.

Linda Eninew's 28-year-old son Easton Beatty experienced a spinal and traumatic brain injury after a fall in 2023. He lives at the Big River Health Centre, a long-term care facility that is more than an hour away from Eninew in Prince Albert.

She said Feather Ridge would offer Beatty access to physical therapy that he can't get currently, land-based activities, and it would be closer to his home.

"Our family has been waiting, hoping that it'll be open, hoping the government will fund Feather Ridge for our people, our young people in the North," said Eninew.