Meet the flood relocation team at Centre de Santé Saint-Thomas

Last year, on Oct. 29, 2023, a second-floor pipe burst at Chateau Vitaline, a Covenant Care centre in Beaumont, flooding part of the second floor and some of the first. Subsequent flood damage assessment made it clear that alternate lodging for several of the centre’s residents, including safe and secure housing spaces for residents with dementia, would be required.

In the afternoon of Nov. 1, Leanne Gugenheimer, site administrator at Centre de Santé Saint-Thomas in Edmonton, another Covenant Care facility, got a call from St. Vitaline asking if they could accommodate some of their residents.

“We got the call, and fortunately we had five rooms available,” says Leanne. “We came together as a Covenant organization to support the needs of that site, seeing what we could do so that we could be ready to accept these residents in the vacant suites as quickly as possible.”

Within an hour of Chateau Vitaline’s request for help, Leanne assembled a flood relocation team consisting of nurse educator Sarah Saidhersi, licensed practical nurse supervisor Mercy Shibu and administrative assistant Salima Filali. The team got to work immediately, sourcing beds, bedside tables, chairs, television sets, toiletries, coat hangers and all other necessities of life, with the assistance of Saint-Thomas’s Aramark partners. Together, they worked until 1 a.m. to get the suites ready for their new residents.

“There was a lot of work to be done,” says Mercy. “In addition to sourcing all the furniture and other necessities and setting up the suites, our staff at Saint-Thomas needed to know about the residents we were receiving. We contacted CareRx, our contracted pharmacy, so all that information needed to be printed out and distributed. We had to make sure we had updated care plans for everybody we were receiving. We had to provide our on-site physician with medication lists. I think the whole process took about four hours.”

Of the five available suites, two had been vacated that very day. Within a couple of hours, the housekeeping and maintenance staff cleaned and sanitized the suites, including floors, fridges, microwaves, bathrooms and so on. Meanwhile, the flood relocation team, together with Aramark’s operations manager, began setting up new beds with frames, box springs and mattresses retrieved from the parkade storage and locating clean bed linens and blankets, new pillows and other items.

By 8 p.m. that day, the five suites were ready for the new occupants, and residents arrived, along with essential items, until well past midnight. The flood relocation team was on hand to review their healthcare plans and welcome them, providing welcome packages, snacks and words of greeting. Over the next two days, the site received additional furniture and personal belongings, with all the residents ultimately moving in on Nov. 3, including an additional resident who relocated into an available independent living suite.

“We met them at the door with carts, escorted residents and families to their new temporary homes and helped them unpack,” says Salima of the move-in process.

“More than anything we were there to reassure the residents and their families that everything would be fine. That was very important. This kind of transitional change is very difficult at the best of times and even more so when you have to make urgent moving plans and try to ensure residents could be housed in groups together.”

The restoration work at Chateau Vitaline took approximately seven weeks to complete. Of the six residents who relocated to Saint-Thomas, five returned to their residence at Chateau Vitaline on Dec. 21, while the sixth opted to stay at Saint-Thomas.

This massive undertaking in hospitality led the flood relocation team at Saint-Thomas to be awarded Covenant’s 2024 Mission Award in the category of Respect.

“We were all extremely happy to win the award,” says Salima. “None of us was expecting it, and suddenly we got this announcement during the Covenant Mission Awards ceremony. It feels great to be acknowledged!”

Leanne commends her teammates, and everyone who played a role, on a job well done.

“I’d say we were winners without needing to win. We’re just thankful that we had those suites available and that we were able to respond quickly to a difficult situation. Being a winner is amazing, and it’s a true testament to this team, but we also must give credit to the Aramark Saint-Thomas team and to the entire team and leadership at Chateau Vitaline for all the work they contributed. Yes, this is a win for us, but this was a multisite operation, and more than anything, it’s a win for our Covenant family.”

Mercy concurs, adding that the team would happily do it all again if needed.

“We’re called to serve, to help people in need, to care for our residents. It’s in our DNA. It’s just what we do.”

Read more about the Saint-Thomas flood relocation team.