Former St Raphael's residents celebrate move to community living in East Cork

Residents and their families gathered on Thursday at the St Raphael’s campus in Youghal to celebrate their successful move to community living.

The event celebrated the new lives of 36 former residents of the St Raphael’s building who have moved into new homes and integrated into their community.

There are now 12 houses in the East Cork area where residents who previously lived in a campus setting are living new lives.

Residents began moving to new homes in 2016. The last residents moved from the old St Raphael’s building in 2019, and the last two of the 12 community houses welcomed residents in December 2021.

Speaking at the event on Thursday, Independent councillor Mary Linehan Foley, who was deputising on behalf of the Mayor of the County of Cork, said St Raphael’s has been supporting residents since the 1990s.

“It was probably regarded as groundbreaking in its day and many of you here today will have spent many years here. I hope that they were happy times for both you and your families,” she said.

She said the service faced many challenges over the decades and that the congregated hospital-like setting of St Raphael’s had its limitations that needed to be addressed for the residents.

The development of the national policy Time to Move on from Congregated Settings in 2011 established the need to close the institutional setting and support residents into transition to ordinary community houses with the ethos of Ordinary Lives in Ordinary Places.

She said that the ethos of Ordinary Lives in Ordinary Places sums up “all of what we aspire to”.

“It’s simple things in life that are important to us all, like going for a walk, preparing a meal, setting a table, having a space that we can call home. An opportunity to live as independent a life as is humanly possible,” she said.

Chief Officer of Cork Kerry Community Healthcare Michael Fitzgerald said that the move to a new way of living and delivering services required huge faith and commitment from staff, residents and families and recognised the “huge amount of work and effort” that has been invested over the last six years.

Director of Services at St Raphael’s Susan Wall said that the move into community living was not just physical but also showed how a change in mindset and approach can best support people with disabilities.