'It's huge for all of us': Sask. parents happy province has plans for adult child-care home

Chris Edwards · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 22, 2025 6:02 AM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

Every morning, Adrienne Zakreski spends an hr and a fractional preparing her 29-year-old lad Evan for the day. She administers his medications, changes his apparel and helps provender him.

Her lad has terrible cerebral palsy and a fig of different cognitive impairments that necessitate changeless aesculapian attraction and supervision. Zakreski discontinue her occupation moving astatine a biotechnology institution to attraction for him full-time while her hubby works. 

"I fractional sleep. I perceive for that cough and past I'm up and moving to suction him oregon rotation him implicit to assistance wide his airway," she said. "It's a 24/7 job."

Zakreski is portion of a radical of Saskatchewan parents doing their champion to care for their disabled children astatine home, but each say they request help.

"We person 3 sets of parents who are close astir 70, and their kids are astir 40," she said. "They're inactive caring for them astatine home. And immoderate of them person utmost wellness conditions themselves. I honorable to God don't cognize however they're doing it."

Zakreski and different parent, Shelley Elder, tally Parents United for Specialized Housing. It advocates for dedicated attraction facilities for big children with aggregate disabilities. In November 2023 they sent a connection to the Saskatchewan authorities to make a dedicated attraction location for children specified arsenic theirs.

On Wednesday, Social Services Minister Terry Jenson met with Zakreski and Elder during the provincial fund rollout, wherever helium explained the government's plans to make an eight-space radical location successful Saskatoon for disabled adults specified arsenic theirs.

"It's huge. It's immense for each of us," Zakreski said. 

Planning successful aboriginal stages

According to the provincial government, the program for the installation is inactive successful its aboriginal stages, and "more accusation astir timelines, costing and scope of services volition beryllium determined done the readying and procurement process."

The inaugural is portion of a broader acceptable of updates to the Ministry of Social Services and Assistance. On Wednesday the provincial authorities announced that the ministry volition person an further $77.3 cardinal successful the 2025-2026 budget, for a full of $1.84 billion. 

Shelley Elder, who cares for her lad Jonathan, 39, who has spina bifida, hydrocephalus and paraplegia, says she and her hubby person been caring for him themselves, and decided to nonstop the connection aft experiencing issues with different radical attraction homes. 

"The availability for a radical location for a medically challenged idiosyncratic who is intellectually and physically challenged, it is not determination close now," she said.

"We cognize that if we enactment our children successful semipermanent care, they volition lone survive, they won't thrive, and they volition dice successful an accelerated death. We don't see it an option."

The imaginable of caller attraction spaces, particularly for younger adults with superior aesculapian needs, is seen arsenic an incremental measurement by Amanda Lewis, the manager of the REALM Foundation, which helps foster enactment networks for radical with carnal disabilities and their families. 

"Initially my absorption was 'That's fantastic,'" she said. "However, it is truly a driblet successful the bucket for what's needed.

"There are beds available, but are they the close beds?" she said, referring to the wide assortment of needs that disabled adults person successful the province. "My acquisition with anybody who is looking to spell into that benignant of enactment is there's hold times and there's not capable beds and they're not the close benignant of beds."

According to Elder, officials from the Ministry of Social Services volition sojourn Saskatoon to sermon the adjacent steps, adding the caller installation should unfastened wrong 2 to 3 years.