Government may act to save L'Arche

By Laureen McMahon

Also See: A shift in the tides for Latona

L'Arche Greater Vancouver may be rescued from the brink of disaster, despite the closing of a program that taught carpentry skills to support the employment of the developmentally disabled.

The L'Arche community suffered a setback last year when L'Arche Wood Products folded because of a lack of funding. Now it seems a ray of hope may yet shine through the dark cloud overshadowing the community which has, for 34 years, offered Jean Vanier's vision of compassionate care.

Laureen McMahon / The B.C. Catholic Guy and Delinda from the Burnaby L’Arche community attend the arts and crafts program which is offered each day at the Sussex Avenue home.

Rich Coleman, B.C.'s Minister of Housing and Social Development, confirmed in an e-mail to The B.C. Catholic that he would meet with L'Arche administrators and Community Living B.C., which oversees contracts to service providers for the developmentally disabled.

The minister said he intends to "discuss concerns" and "find solutions" to "ensure that Community Living B.C. continues to provide high-quality and compassionate services to a group of British Columbians with very complex and diverse needs."

The missive from the ministry came as welcome news to L'Arche, which has been struggling to maintain care for 24 disabled permanent residents and to provide two day programs offering activities to 16 others, said Executive Director and Community Leader Denise Haskett.

"We have been in `crisis mode' for a long time because of chronic underfunding," Haskett told The B.C. Catholic. "We certainly welcome the chance to sit down with Minister Coleman and discuss our funding situation with him so we can find solutions which not only enable us to continue to care for those who have been entrusted to us but to keep the mission of L'Arche alive."

Ten years after Jean Vanier invited two handicapped men to leave an institution and move with him into the first L'Arche (French for "the Ark") home in Trosly-Breuil, France, L'Arche Greater Vancouver became a sign of hope for many Lower Mainland disabled and their families.

Today International Federation of L'Arche Communities are in 30 countries offering what Vanier always dreamed of, a permanent home where everyone is valued and respected equally whatever their level of physical and intellectual gifts. Intrinsic to the L'Arche philosophy is the belief that the disabled have as much or more to teach the "abled" as they have to learn, said Haskett.

However, there have been eight years without a budget increase from government, and only very small increases in recent years from Community Living B.C., a crown corporation founded in 2004 to improve the delivery of lifelong supports for the developmentally disabled. This has galvanized L'Arche into going public in a broad appeal for help.

"It's a big decision and not one we ever expected to make," explained Haskett, "but we don't see any other way. Without a significant increase to our budget we may be facing the end. Jean Vanier's dream is indeed at risk."

L'Arche receives just under $1.8 million a year from the provincial government through CLBC. This must cover 86 per cent of their budget including salaries. Money to run programs and maintain facilities comes from donations to the L'Arche Greater Vancouver Foundation.

Two years ago L'Arche began talks with CLBC which, at that time, acknowledged that the organization had been underfunded for many years.

"They even used the word `shameful,' and offered us a one-time-only increase of $570,000, most of which was to go directly to hiring support staff to care for our aging population," said Haskett.

However, in spite of an understanding that more money would be forthcoming when their contract was renewed last September, L'Arche was told that, as CLBC hadn't received enough of an increase to their budget from the Ministry of Children and Family Development, they couldn't keep their commitment to L'Arche.

A statement from CLBC addressing the issue said in part, "Our first commitment is to those individuals with developmental disabilities, and the families that L'Arche serves. CLBC supports the model of service delivery that L'Arche has been providing for past years.... L'Arche has asked for a 75 per cent increase to their contract to provide service differently to the same number of individuals. CLBC does not support that request."

However, Haskett told The B.C. Catholic that L'Arche has never asked to provide service differently, but simply to be allowed to maintain the model of service that has been in place for many years.

The ministry comment, she added, "Shows that the government is not listening to us." She will, she added, take the matter up with Minister Coleman.

L'Arche is still reeling, said Trudi Shaw, board president and an Anglican Church minister who has been associated with L'Arche for five years, from a CLBC suggestion that the best use of taxpayers' dollars is the relocation of their aging, disabled residents into a home-sharing model akin to private foster care, which would be in stark contrast to the L'Arche vision.

"If our people go into foster homes there is no guarantee they can stay there two, five, or 10 years in the future. When they came to us, they and their families knew they would have a home for life. Our population has complex care needs, so most cannot move in with relatives."

L'Arche, said Shaw, was founded to nurture the disabled emotionally as well as mentally.

"We model a community that is good for everybody. We hold up the dignity of our people and prevent them being patronized. The L'Arche philosophy is clear: we need the disabled as much as they need us.

"Can the government guarantee that their new homes will offer the same kind of safe and loving environment or will people be relegated to a basement room with just their minimum needs met? They will be isolated from their L'Arche family and may have to move again and again if the situation changes. How will they get to programs? What about the potential for abuse?"

"We have been really shocked," said Haskett, "The whole community aspect of L'Arche will be lost if this home sharing is adopted and we are reduced to hosting Christmas parties and other events. We will no longer be L'Arche."

Telling the L'Arche story, said Haskett, goes far beyond advocacy for just one community.

"It isn't just to raise our profile and fight for our own cause but to let the public know how the disabled are being treated. CLBC is responsible for many groups like ours who are also suffering and may have to give up if nothing changes."

Shock doesn't begin to describe the feelings of Judy Carter-Smith, whose sister Barbara Carter has lived at the L'Arche home on Sussex Avenue in Burnaby for 31 years.

"I think that, for people like Barbara who have spent half their life in L'Arche, it would be absolutely devastating to move. L'Arche is her home. The residents' needs have increased but the funding isn't there to support them with a quality of life. A high percentage are now over 50 and would have great difficulty adapting to new circumstances. I can't support Barbara on my own as her needs are so great now and I am a caregiver for my mother who has Alzheimer's. Barbara has developed mobility issues and needs a lift to be transported. She needs 24-hour care and couldn't be left alone.

"What she receives from L'Arche is a sense of family and community filled with people who care about her, and this cannot be duplicated anywhere else. Barbara goes to the prayer services and other activities. L'Arche made it possible for her to hold down her job at B.C. Hydro. They made sure she got to work on the bus and helped if there were difficulties."

Disabled from childhood, Carter moved into Woodlands School after her family relocated to Vancouver because of her needs. As a young adult she was placed in a transition house for a brief period, which was unsatisfactory. Then her parents learned about L'Arche and Carter became a member of the L'Arche family. Soon after, her father joined the Board of Directors.

"L'Arche is clearly chronically underfunded," said Carter-Smith. "My parents wanted very badly for Barbara to go into L'Arche because of the values and philosophy. We have been delighted with the care she has received for 31 years."

After her sister retired, said Carter-Smith, she entered a day program through the Community Living Society, where she makes pottery and paint and feels useful and productive.

Carter-Smith, who has joined a L'Arche committee to tackle funding issues, said, "I think the government is being very shortsighted and quite mean-spirited. Where is the commitment to adults with developmental disabilities? I don't see the political will to care for the disabled. Frankly, the Liberal track record is not very good."

Kelly Gleeson, director of communications for the Ministry of Children and Family Development, told The B.C. Catholic that CLBC received a $42 million budget increase this year and that it is the corporation's responsibility to distribute funding to service providers like L'Arche.

However, Laney Bryenton, the executive director of the B.C. Association for Community Living, which advocates for B.C.'s disabled, said that L'Arche "is very representative of organizations that have not had increases in their contracts."

Each year, said Bryenton, the provincial government fails to give CLBC enough funding to support service providers like L'Arche.

While the government came up with $22.3 million for new services for the CLBC 2008-09 budget, according to Bryenton it falls far short of the needed $35.5 million. Meanwhile, she noted, the number of disabled adults on the waiting list for assistance, including housing, in B.C. is up to 700.

L'Arche board president Shaw said that although the fostering idea may initially save money, down the line it could easily end up costing much more.

"We monitor our people and intervene if change is needed to care, medications, etc. Will this happen under the ministry's plan?

"L'Arche has always accepted people who didn't fit in and were passed on because of their serious needs, and it is amazing that, when those with even severe disabilities are cared for in a safe and secure environment, they can surprise us with their accomplishments. Some have been here from the first day L'Arche opened. We already have a wonderful, caring community in place and I just don't see that being replicated anywhere else."

Several long-time L'Arche residents, Denise Haskett pointed out, are among those released from institutions when the government closed facilities for the mentally ill in the province nearly 40 years ago. Anyone who has ever visited Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, she noted, will be aware of the disasters which often resulted from that particular government move.

A priority for L'Arche right now, said Haskett, is quality of care; there just isn't the money to pay for the growing levels of care required for residents. "We are a justice-based group, yet our 60-plus staff are stuck on the bottom rung of wage levels for the group of non-union service providers to which they belong. This lack of equity for our assistants, who provide such loving and exceptional dedication, is most distressing."

It's mostly young people who are drawn to work at L'Arche, Haskett explained; young adults seeking an experience of community where they can truly make a difference to people's lives.

"They make a one-year commitment and, in the past, many stayed on. However this year we lost a number of really good people because they need to support families and just cannot afford to stay."

While saving L'Arche remains an open question, the fight to provide a stable home and loving relationships so residents can continue to build skills and self-esteem in the way Jean Vanier envisioned will continue, Haskett promised.

When it comes to caring for the poor and marginalized, Vanier said in his recent address to pilgrims at the 49th International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City, creating loving relationships must go hand-in-hand with providing material needs.

"What the poor need more than anyone else is people who say I love you," he told the congress. "To be like Jesus we have to be able to wash the feet of one another."

To offset the loss of L'Arche Wood Products due to lack of funding, plans are underway to replace it with a new venture with the potential to keep core residents engaged and productive, said Haskett.

"We are introducing a gardening and handyman service called Neighbours Helping Neighbours, and our residents are busy learning to use lawn mowers and other equipment under supervision. Brochures have already gone out advertising the services."

When the Sisters of St. Ann heard about the new program, they provided a generous donation which helped to cover the cost of buying a good, used pick-up truck to carry the gardening tools.

"They became our guardian angels and we are very grateful," Haskett told The B.C. Catholic.

Haskett said she will tell Minister Coleman, when she gets the chance, that L'Arche is refusing to give up.

"Positive things have already come from telling our story. A few businesses have stepped forward to assist with services and a local technology company has helped us for some time with free IT support. Last year the Vancouver Archdiocese, through Project Advance, gave a $50,000 donation to install a new sprinkler system."

Shaw said the L'Arche Foundation is actively seeking corporate support as well as help from individuals who can offer skills as well as financial gifts. "We also need people to volunteer for our board of directors," she added.

People have been voicing their concerns to the government on L'Arche's behalf, said Haskett, and a few on the political scene like Burnaby-Edmonds New Democrat MLA Raj Chouhan, Opposition Minister for Human Rights, Multiculturalism, and Immigration, have taken up the cause.

Last May Chouhan spoke in the legislature and criticized the government for their lack of understanding of the critical role facilities like L'Arche play in communities.

"They have not adequately funded Community Living B.C. and have totally failed people with disabilities, which is not only disappointing, but alarming," said Chouhan. "It's not that the government doesn't have the money but that their priorities are completely wrong. They need to dip into their surplus and solve some of these problems. Why is it that the Campbell Liberals have no qualms wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on their pet projects like the convention centre while facilities like L'Arche and its clients are being thrown into a state of turmoil because of funding shortages?"

The L'Arche Greater Vancouver community will continue to discern how it can continue to live the L'Arche mission, said Haskett. "We are part of L'Arche worldwide, one of 26 Canadian L'Arche communities and one of seven in Western Canada responsible for training assistants to work with the disabled.

"We are thankful for everyone who has written, called, donated, and prayed, and this has renewed our strength and confidence. We recognize that we need to carry Jean's message forward, so we will continue to seek support, such as approaching Burnaby City Council recently. It can be distressing to put people in the spotlight because of the nature of our population, but we really want the community to join us so we can keep Jean Vanier's dream not only alive but thriving into the future."

Updates on funding for L'Arche are posted on their web site, www.larchevancouver.org. The services of Neighbours Helping Neighbours can be ordered by those living in Burnaby, New Westminster, and east and south Vancouver.

To make a donation or to help in any other way, go to the web site or call 604-435-9544.