Midland area Community Health Centre gears up for engagement
Friday October 19, 2007 -- Jason Thompson
Ernie Vaillancourt says the development of a community health centre in the Midland area has been a long-time coming.
Now that the groundwork for the establishment of a centre, to be named the Le Centre de santé communautaire CHIGAMIK Community Health Centre, is in place, the centre’s steering committee is preparing to undertake a community engagement process that will help define what health services will be available on a priority basis once the CHC is up and running.
To help move the community engagement process forward, the steering committee received $75,000 from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care which flowed through the North Simcoe Muskoka Local Health Integration Network (LHIN).
Vaillancourt, the steering committee’s co-chair, says the amount is the maximum they could have received for community engagement.
“The definition of that word (CHIGAMIK) means it’s the people’s place and it’s going to reflect the health needs of the major community members within that area,” Vaillancourt says. “We have Anglophone, Francophone, Aboriginal and Metis. We specify the four, but not at the exclusion of others.”
While the exact location of the centre itself has yet to be finalized, Vaillancourt says it will be in the Midland area.
When asked to define the need for a CHC in Midland or surrounding areas, Vaillancourt responded by saying, “have you got two days?”
According to Vaillancourt, the story of a community health centre in the Midland area is nearly two decades old. He says a study was conducted by a consultant 18 years ago that stated the need for a community health centre in the County of Simcoe. This was back when the province was divided District Health Councils.
For a number reasons, the community health centre didn’t see any funding and the project never got off the ground.
Fast forward to 2006, and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term care makes an announcement that it is preparing to fund the development of community health centres.
“What it meant for the North Simcoe Muskoka LHIN area was that there was a new community health centre that was approved, in the sense that they announced one, for Midland and for Collingwood . . . which surprised everybody,” Vaillancourt says.
Once the community engagement process is complete, the steering committee is to submit an interim report to the LHIN, with the final report due by the end of the fiscal year (March 31).
The committee will examine the establishment of a board, recruitment of board members, deciding on the board’s by-laws and the hiring of a CEO and staff for the new centre.
Vaillancourt says target dates by which the centre will be operational should be decided during the next fiscal year although any guess at when the centre would open is pure speculation at this point.