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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Residential care association worried about finances

by

Otto Carrington
1497 days ago
20210615
Trinidad and Tobago Residential President, Care Association Caroline Ruiz

Trinidad and Tobago Residential President, Care Association Caroline Ruiz

The T&T Res­i­den­tial Care As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­CA) said yes­ter­day that some of its el­der­ly home­own­ers are fac­ing a fi­nan­cial cri­sis.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Car­o­line Ruiz said rel­a­tives and care­givers of the el­der­ly have lost in­come and this is hav­ing a rip­pling ef­fect on the op­er­a­tions at some el­der­ly care fa­cil­i­ties.

“Rel­a­tives have lost jobs, some of them are out­stand­ing to the homes, some have not paid in months. On top of which, we are us­ing ad­di­tion­al stuff be­cause we don’t get Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE). We have to pur­chase PPE, it is not do­nat­ed,” she said.

She added: “We get as­sis­tance from the rel­a­tives and loved ones to as­sist in what­ev­er way that they could af­ford but we are still in cri­sis fi­nan­cial­ly.”

She has ap­pealed again to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, not­ing that they raised the is­sue via cor­re­spon­dence last year, as the min­istry was as­sist­ing church­es and oth­er bod­ies.

“We are deal­ing with the most vul­ner­a­ble and at this point, we are as­sist­ing the Gov­ern­ment, be­cause if it was not for us they would have had more is­sues with the el­der­ly. Af­ter all, we sus­tained it for 12 to 14 months. We are try­ing to reach to So­cial De­vel­op­ment to lis­ten to us and see what they can do for the home­own­ers.”

She added, “Why are we al­ways the last? They claim ver­bal­ly that we are the first and we are the most vul­ner­a­ble but that’s not the truth be­cause if we are, they will reach out.”

The TTR­CA is part of the mass vac­ci­na­tion of the el­der­ly, with the Min­istry of Health as­sign­ing 1,000 dos­es to the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Ruiz said she is grate­ful the roll­out start­ed three weeks ago in South Trinidad and she is hope­ful it will ex­pand to more homes across the coun­try. She hopes her as­so­ci­a­tion can get 1,000 more dos­es.

She added that rel­a­tives of those at the homes have start­ed to sign the con­sent forms to al­low the el­der­ly to be vac­ci­nat­ed and this will in­crease the num­ber of el­der­ly at the homes to be vac­ci­nat­ed. The vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve will take place at each home across the coun­try. (OC)


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