The former St Lawrence Nursing Home at Galong has received interest from groups looking to utilise the facility.
What to do with the old St Lawrence Nursing Home at Galong? A meeting regarding the future occupation of the building, drew a crowd of 30 people at last Thursday evening’s meeting in the Galong village. A proposal to house a Chinese natural medicine retreat was briefly discussed, however, a proposal which seems to possess some level of certainty involves housing women.
Previous moves looking at establishing a facility for ‘lost men’ drew the ire of villagers and residents within the former Harden Shire area. The devlopment did not go ahead with residents raising concerns about the ability of emergency services inlcuding Police and Ambulance to react if needing to respond to an issue on site. The suitability of the site will again come in to question with a proposal for a Post Rehabilitation facility for women who have recovered from substance abuse, now on the cards.
Organiser of the proposal Kate Cleary highlighted that the users of the facility would often have a mental health disorder as well as a substance abuse disorder. In correspondence to Galong Villagers she wrote “I have been offered the use of St Lawrence’s by the Archdiocese for this purpose. I want to develop it as a therapeutic community for participants using the principles of George de Leon, whose work has proven successful in the rehabilitation of people with substance use disorders.”
De Leon is a Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. Cleary said
“This program of rehabilitation will be augmented by regular manual labour caring for the buildings and grounds and some light farming. All participants will be interviewed and assessed before entering the program to ensure they have a serious commitment to recovery. Screening of initial participants for commitment to the vision is extremely important in the early setting up of the work. The program will include practise in budgeting, parenting, basic domestic skills, and vocational courses online. Staff will consist of paid professionals as well as screened volunteers. We would hope to have a live- in counsellor trained in the George De Leon therapeutic communities approach and a registered nurse/psychologist with drug and alcohol counselling experience. The volunteers will act as mother figures or mentors. We would also access people in the local community with various skills to come in and teach the residents e.g. knitting, light farming, bottling etc.”
“We are committing to a three- month license with the Archdiocese to start with. Two clients are currently awaiting a placement. At the end of the three months we could meet again with members of the village to discuss its impact on them. Once things are liveable we will start the program in an ad experimentum manner. We will adjust things as we go. When there is a firm foundation of sponsors and funding, an active board and members, trained volunteers and paid staff ready to go, we will advertise the facility through rehabilitation centres and other social welfare arms in the community.”
Hilltops Council were contacted for comment, however, did not respond before deadline. Their comments pre meeting last week inlcuded the following statement.
“I wish to advise that Council has been requested to provide advice on upgrades required to the buildings on numerous occasions and for a variety of potential uses. At times that advice has been to provide onsite as some of the matters that are required to be addressed by applicants are best viewed on the site. On each occasion access has been gained via the provision of a key by the site custodians. Until such time as an application has been lodged for assessment these advices are for conceptual potential uses only and the advice provided is, accordingly generalist in nature. At this point in time Council does not have a firm proposal for the site.”
It is expected that for the proposal to go ahead a development application would need to be lodged with Hilltops Council. According to local residents, squatting has been occurring on the site at various stages since the former retirement village was closed. Stakeholders for the site to be re established as a working facility in the future include potential users, residents, Hilltops Council, emergency services and the Catholic Arch Diocese. The times will continue to monitor any progress for our readers.
