GRANVILLE - Malta Home Retirement Community will close its Personal Care Home section at its facility in Granville, due to operating losses.
The Personal Care Home section houses elderly people who are unable to live independently, but don't require the care of a nursing home, said Randy Sheaffer, chief executive officer of Valley View Haven, which Malta Home Retirement Community and Valley View Retirement Community are operated under.
Fifteen residents and six employees will be affected by the closing of the section, which is planned to shut down at the end of April. However, at this time, it isn't 100 percent certain that the section will close at that time, Sheaffer said.
"We've started transferring residents now," Sheaffer said.
More than half of the residents will move to Valley View Retirement Community's Terrace. Others will move to other personal care facilities, and a few will transfer to nursing home care at Malta Home or Valley View Retirement Community, Sheaffer said.
"We tried to be as considerate to them as we could," he said. "We tried to meet their wishes as best we could."
The employees at the Personal Home Care section, which are comprised of five resident assistants and one program administrator, will be offered other jobs within the organization. In addition, the resident assistants have the opportunity to become nursing assistants within the company. Sheaffer said he hopes to assign everyone to work within the organization as nursing assistants, or where other work is needed.
The decision to close the Personal Care Home section was made late last year by Valley View Haven's board of directors, because the Personal Care Home program was losing $20,000 monthly in 2008. The board thought it needed to take this step to curtail the losses, so as not to jeopardize the financial condition of the organization as a whole. The decision was sad, but necessary, Sheaffer said.
Malta Home's other sections, which include its nursing home section and surrounding retirement cottages, will continue to operate. At this time, the organization will not have to make any other future adjustments as a result of the economy, Sheaffer said.
