The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment says that the Fin­bar Ryan Geri­atric Home is a pri­vate­ly owned home and not sub­vent­ed by the Min­istry. In a press re­lease is­sued to­day the Min­istry stat­ed that the home is man­aged and op­er­at­ed by the So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent De Paul, which is an NGO un­der the purview of the Catholic Church. The Min­istry made the state­ment in re­sponse to a re­cent so­cial me­dia post about the Fin­bar Ryan Geri­atric Home.

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Min­istry:

In re­sponse to a re­cent so­cial me­dia post about the Fin­bar Ryan Geri­atric Home, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices ad­vis­es that this is a pri­vate­ly owned Home, which is not sub­vent­ed by the Min­istry. The Home is man­aged and op­er­at­ed by the So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent De Paul, which is a NGO un­der the purview of the Catholic Church.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the MS­DFS and the So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent De Paul, which ex­ist­ed since 1991 was for the man­age­ment and op­er­a­tion of the Cen­tre for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons (CS­DP), lo­cat­ed at Besson Street, Port of Spain. The agree­ment came to an end in Au­gust 2022, when a de­ci­sion was tak­en to ter­mi­nate the ex­ist­ing agree­ment and re­lo­cate the res­i­dents of CS­DP. This fol­lowed sev­er­al at­tempts to get the So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent De Paul to be more ac­count­able and trans­par­ent in their re­port­ing and op­er­a­tions, with re­gard to man­age­ment of the CS­DP.

Cou­pled with this, the venue had out­grown its orig­i­nal pur­pose in terms of be­ing a fa­cil­i­ty for long term res­i­den­tial ac­com­mo­da­tion. To date, all res­i­dents of the cen­tre have been re­lo­cat­ed based on al­ter­na­tive op­tions which were made avail­able to them.

The Min­istry has two (2) clients un­der the Com­mu­ni­ty Care pro­gramme at this Home. The Min­istry pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed the Fin­bar Ryan Geri­atric Home on May 17, 2022 and a sub­se­quent meet­ing re­lat­ed to guid­ance to im­prove stan­dards of care was held in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to the care and pro­tec­tion of old­er per­sons and there­fore any form of abuse of old­er per­sons is of grave con­cern. Sim­i­lar to oth­er re­ports of el­der abuse re­ceived by the Min­istry, in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Di­vi­sion of Age­ing vis­it­ed the Fin­bar Ryan Home yes­ter­day and re­port­ed that the res­i­dents were in rea­son­ably good health and did not re­quire ur­gent med­ical at­ten­tion.