To provide rehabilitative services for people with psychosocial disability
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - A new $1.3M facility to assist persons with psychosocial disability in St. Kitts and Nevis was commissioned today (Dec. 5), and it is expected to ease the burden on the JNF Hospital providing daily treatment while assisting those with their rehabilitation process.
According to the project’s consultant, Caribbean Development Bank’s Calvin Pemberton, workers began construction of the facility in June 2015 and it was completed back in February.
Located in Lime Kiln, the approximately 3,000-square foot Mental Health Day Treatment Center, which sits on an acre of land, has 12 rooms and can accommodate up to 24 patients at any given time.
Pemberton explained that the facility is not meant for overnight stay as it is intended to be just a day treatment center. “So one would come during the day and the client would be encouraged to take their medications, get counselling, do activities, do some training and those types of things.”
Junior Minister of Health Senator Wendy Phipps explained that shortly after taking office last year, the project was struggling and the team Unity Government had to ensure that it was completed in a timely manner because a large investment had already been made.
“When the present Administration got into office in February 2015, we recognised that this particular BNTF-sponsored project was about to be lost. As a result of it, what you see here today is what is very much a salvaged mission; in that this project was part of a previous BNTF cycle that had been in discussions and negotiations for at least three or four years. And by the time the Government took office, we knew that although over $800,000 would have been committed by the BNTF to the project, if we did not complete this facility by the end of June 2015 we would have lost everything.”
Phipps pointed out that when the Government took office they “went through a very feverish process”, but with support from the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Social Service as well as staff members of the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF), the project to come to fruition.
She noted that when the project began in June last year, BNTF had only committed some $100,000 and, as a result, the Government, through the Ministry, funded the remainder of the project.
“This shows the importance that we placed on it,” Minister Phipps added.
The Junior Health Minister informed that it is the Government’s hope that the Mental Health Day Treatment Center would provide an avenue for rehabilitation of those who are seeking such, so that they could be reintegrated into community life.
“...It is for that reason why the Standard Operating Procedure that would govern the management of this center would take into consideration all of the various facets of processing and evaluations that patients would require to go through in order to assess their readiness for use at a center of this kind,” Minister Phipps said.
And Minister of Health Hon. Eugene Hamilton said the new center fits into the Government’s strategy of “primary healthcare”.
In fact, he stated, the Health Center “potentially minimizes the need for in-patient emergency services as well as a crowded psychiatric ward”.
“This new facility therefore complements the overall strategic plan and framework of delivering primary healthcare for all,” the Senior Health Minister declared.
Remarks were also made by Prime Minister Dr. the Hon. Timothy Harris in the presence of oher Government Ministers and the Governor-General, His Excellency Sir Tapley Seaton.
