'This is our home': Residents and staff protest closure of Regina Lutheran Home
CTV
There are more calls on the provincial government to take over operation of a Regina nursing home. The Regina Lutheran Home will close next spring, forcing 62 residents to move.
There are more calls on the provincial government to take over operation of a Regina nursing home. The Regina Lutheran Home will close next spring, forcing 62 residents to move.
On Thursday, some of the residents and their families asked the province to assume ownership and continue providing care.
Kim Smythe has lived at Regina Lutheran Home for the past three and a half years. She is one of the 62 residents who will be forced to move when the care home closes next spring.
“I would like to stay here. There’s no reason why we can’t,” she said. “We enjoy it here. This is our home. There is where the people that work here are like our family.”
The nursing home is closing because the operator has decided to exit the business. Don Gunderson visits his wife at the home every day.
“After eight years and she was booted from one care home to the next at the beginning, we had to wait a long time for here and now this is her home. Her care aides and the residents here are her family and I just can’t believe that they can let a building like this close,” he said.
A group of residents, their families and staff gathered outside the Lutheran Home to protest the closure. They want the government to take over the operation like it did with last year’s purchase of several Extendicare facilities.